Over the Learning Hump . . . Sort Of

I've just spent a couple of beautiful "morning hours" reading on the porch.  That's the good part. The bad part is that I was reading a really good but really depressing current events book, Anand Giridharadas' The True American.  I had to take a break for beauty and creativity.

Since April, I've been participating in a couple of online sketch classes.  First, was Danny Gregory's and Koosje Koene's Sketchbook Skool - Beginnings and then Koosje's Awesome Art Journaling.  Over the course of these two classes, I've been coaxed out of my art comfort zone.  I've sketched outdoors, sketched in public, used new materials, attempted ever larger scenes and more complex subjects, and tried new techniques.

My first attempt at sketching solely with colored pencils was frustrating.  It seemed to take forever and I had to resort to labeling the object in order to remember what it was that I was trying to capture in my sketchbook.

It's a seashell in case you can't read the small print.  Along the way, I've found that my art proficiency doesn't progress in a steady, upward line.  At times I turn out sketches that blow me away such as the ones below.

At other times, my eye hand coordination reverts back to left brain imaging, childlike drawings of what my brain says things should look like instead of what my eyes actually see.  Below is a good case in point.

This is supposed to be a Talavera birdbath.  It's wildly out of proportion and the basin area bears little resemblance to its actual roundness, size, and depth.  Oh well, it doesn't matter.  I do art mainly to balance my excessively left-brained mode of rational thinking with some right-brained creativity and doing.  On to Sketchbook Skool 2 - Seeing, which begins July 4th and where I will continue to get in my "100 bad drawings."  The concept being that you've got to do lots of 'bad' drawings before you start creating lots of good drawings.  If you like Malcolm Gladwell, this is also known as the "10,000 Hour Rule".