An Honest Assessment

As I begin this journey, I'd like to take a good look at where I've already been. For it's not truly the beginning of my art journey; it is a continuation. I want to look closely at the artwork I've made and make an honest assessment of it, or at least as honest of an assessment as one can make of their own work.

But... Before I begin, I want to make a note to myself. This is the third time I've tackled this post and each time I've had to tone it down and scale it back. When my kids were little they used to watch a children's show on PBS called Dragon Tales. There was a two-headed dragon on it whose heads were siblings named Zak and Wheezy. Zak, the sensible one, was always saying to Wheezy, "Take it easy, Wheezy!" I don't know why, but this phrase has been popping into my head every so often lately. My own way of reminding myself not to freak out, I guess. In this case, it's my way of reminding myself to keep my time and energy focused primarily on the creating and only secondarily on the show-and-tell aspect of it, and this blog (and Instagram) fall into the show-and-tell category.

I started the post thinking I'd go through a sampling of my older art and some of my newer art and see how I've grown and improved over the years and what areas I need to work on. How do I want to grow and improve more? First time around I ended up with way too many photos! I decided to limit it to just two photos per category (i.e. portraits, digital art, embroidery, etc.). This morning, I realized I had spent so much time and energy on this one blog post that it was starting to make me unenthusiastic about blogging at all and that was also kind of bleeding into my feelings about Instagram, just because they both are in that aforementioned show-and-tell category.

That's when I figured out there's no reason I can't revisit this particular topic again in the future. No reason I can't focus on one type of art now and others some time in the future. One at a time. I need to take it easy, Wheezy.

Today, I want to begin with this category: drawings in graphite or charcoal, in a realistic style, from a reference.

I drew this picture of Grace Kelly when I was in my late teens/early twenties. It's a good example of the realistic work I was capable of at that time. I used a plain old number 2 pencil. One of the best lessons I remember learning in my junior high school art classes was to "draw what you see." My art teacher from those years taught me to not draw an eye or a nose or lips, but to instead draw the shapes and lines and shadows that I see. Otherwise your symbol-loving brain gets in the way and tries to simplify things.

What I can see here is a pretty good beginning foray. I didn't always get the anatomy of a face just right and I had a tendency to be afraid of deepening the darker areas (difficult with a number two pencil, to be fair), but it had some good potential. 

Here are a three more older examples of portraits I did in the realistic style. These are mostly unfinished or sketchy, because I never pushed myself to get to a finished, polished stage.

This is one of the more recent realistic portraits I've drawn. I created it for the art class I took in 2017 when I went back to college. It is done with charcoal and was drawn from a photo of my oldest child.

I've improved in creating good tonal values, but still have a tendency to not want to push the darker areas, especially in faces. I've improved in terms of getting the facial anatomy right, but even so, the eye on the right is slightly off (a little too big? a little too high?) and that side of the face is pushed out a little too much. I am very proud of how I did the jacket collar in this. I think I improved a lot over the years at details like this, but lots of times I get lazy and don't bother. Since I had a deadline and a grade involved in this particular project I was motivated to get it done. I haven't used charcoal much since I took this class and I really should. I still have some of the fancy expensive paper I bought for this portrait. I should use it.

Here are a few more recent realistic type portraits I've done. (Again, I didn't push myself to get to a finished/polished stage on these.)

Below is a drawing in graphite I did during the aforementioned art class a few years ago. This was done from an actual vase of flowers, not a photo.

I don't have very many examples of still life drawings made outside of that art class. It seems I haven't been all that interested in making them outside of what I did in that art class. I'd actually like to change that and push myself to draw more objects from everyday life. The things that surround us offer so many opportunities for things to draw. It can help me look at things in a different way and it can offer up ideas for what to draw when I'm staring at a blank page. 

Here is one more example of a drawing of an object (also for the art class).

In looking through my artwork, there may be a lack of drawings of things, but there's no shortage of drawings of people, particularly of faces. Seems like I'm pretty fascinated by people as a subject and it's something I've revisited over and over. I'd like to continue to work on that, but one thing I've noticed is that I just do so much better when I'm drawing from a reference. Seems obvious, but I do have a tendency to try to draw faces out of thin air. I am getting better at doing so, but honestly, the results tend to be mixed. Drawing from a reference can help me to better understand the contours of the human face so that if I do want to draw from imagination I can make it look more like an actual face. 

I think I'll set myself a little challenge. This week, I will draw one quick sketch each day. I'll alternate between drawing a face, either from life or a photo, and drawing an object or objects that I'm looking at in real life. 

I'm also starting to think about the 100 Day Challenge that begins in February. I think I might want to participate and since this idea of drawing from reference keeps popping up for me, I think I might want to center it around that.

I'll see you next Wednesday and if all goes well, I'll have 7 sketches to share with you. (If it doesn't, well, I guess I'll think of something else to write about.)