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| Drawing practice |
After my last post, I spent a lot of time thinking.
I wonder a lot whether I have what it takes to make great art. Whether I can move from being a 'promising' artist to a great one.
I wonder if I will ever master the art of illusion on paper. And in the meantime, I find the best teachers I can to help me master more illusions. [I'm taking a Fab.U.Lous. drawing class with Ian Roberts right now.]
Though art is a right-brained activity for the most part, the way I approach learning is very left brained. My left brain is happy when I have learned 'how' to do something, but it's not thrilled when I practice and find out that the 'knowing how' does not translate into 'doing' it well time after time.
My mind kicks in and tells me stories about how I should stop trying at all because I'm too old, it's taking to long to learn, I don't have what it takes, I'm making too many mistakes, it's a waste of time, I don't have the natural talent, yada, yada, yada.
If I have a magic at all, it is the ability to allow these opposite forces to co-exist in myself. I work on letting these parts of me get to know each other and I carefully choose who gets to run the show.
I show up at the paper. I make another attempt. I have learned to keep track of every single attempt and what I've learned from it, but to not consider them failures. I have learned to turn my 'trash pile' into journals where I can work through the stories I'm telling myself and keep integrating all of the parts of myself.
Thus, my art feeds my self-awareness
by providing a canvas for self-exploration and my continued self-awareness then
makes it easier to practice my art.
That is a good system. That is
good magic.