Tip of my tongue

Have you ever had that you know what you wanted to say but you just couldn’t remember the words.
In Dutch we talk about having something at the tip of ones tongue.

I have a lot this type of experience. Not with words but with pictures.
Sometimes when I try to remember someone, his face is gone. I know he has a face but I can’t remember it.
For years I was afraid that would mean that I wouldn’t recognize him the next time I’d meet him. Although I always did it still it frightened me.
Especially the fact that it almost always were people I liked a lot, whose face I couldn’t remember had me scared. (Although it’s quite possible that I also would have had this problem with people I didn’t like. Maybe I never noticed it because I don’t think as much about people I don’t like.)

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When I try to draw a portrait from memory I run into the same problem. I can remember one detail of the face and when I try to concentrate on the rest of the face, everything disappears. The harder I try, the less I remember.
While the face is disappearing from my memory I feel that if I would see a picture or a drawing of him I would recognize him.

Next drawing

After trying my hand at a drawing of a fire I thought I go on with playing with color and shape and draw another rockface.

Cliffside 1st sketch

Building a drawing

After I drew this part I found something strange.
I have no idea what is to the left of this point.
I do know what is to the right of this point but I can’t see it in my mind. I can almost feel it. I have the same feeling as when I have something on the tip of my tongue.

Not knowing what’s to the left of this point isn’t really a problem. It just calls for a re-framing of the drawing. Just like you would with a photograph.
I just didn’t think it possible to get in the same situation when your drawing from memory.

As I told you before I have a kind of syntheses between seeing and feeling. While I’m looking at something I can chose to “touch” it with a kind of imagionary hand. When I do I have a strange all be very exciting feeling.

Not being able to see what is to the right of this point I used my imaginary hand to feel it and got very, very excited.

The problem with getting very excited is that I can’t sit still. I have to move. Go out and cycle for a bit or just bounce through my room. Which means that this drawing is turning out to be much more difficult than I had expected.

A second problem is that I have to decide on colors while I’m trying to feel my way round this rock formation. It wasn’t long before I realized that I had made a mistake. In the middle of the drawing is a red-brown patch. Just below there’s a dark brown patch. The dark brown patch should have been much lighter. I tried to save it by making the dark patch reddish but it didn’t work.

To give myself some grip I tried sketching a part with a graphic pencil.

Ravine 2th sketch

Usually if I find a sketch isn’t what I wanted I put it away and start anew. This time I put the sketch in front so I could see part of the landscape. I figured that would subdue the excitement and I would be able to finish the drawing.
But it didn’t work. Or actually it did work but not in the way I expected.

The feeling of excitement left me completely and was replaced with a feeling of complete boredom. I couldn’t concentrate on the drawing and within minutes I caught myself making a mistake.

The next morning while looking at the inside of my eyelids I saw the Cliffside as it should be.
I’m not sure whether I already have the technical skill necessary to draw this picture. I get back to it.

Hack

I’m finding that I have some difficulty in drawing parallel lines. Especially when they are more then a few centimeters apart.
To make this easier turn the sheet of paper till the first line is pointing straight down. When you draw your second line straight down it will be parallel to the first.
You can use almost the same technique to draw two lines at right angle. Just turn the paper till the first line is horizontal. Draw the second line straight down and you’ll have your right angle.

Link

I would never call this Youtube video art but I am sure you never saw anything like this. It sure gives a whole new meaning to the word food coloring (Couldn’t resist ).