A tweet
After posting my last drawing, I got a tweet from @mayavbreemen (dutch) telling me she very much liked my drawing and asking me what my opinion was of my drawing.
At first glance that seemed a very strange question to ask of an artist. Of course do I like my drawing. Otherwise I wouldn’t have made it, right?
Wrong!
My goal in drawing isn’t to create beautiful pictures. My goal is to create interesting pictures.
Let me explain.
Beauty and the beast
Compare this picture of a sunset with this interpretation of a painting by Vincent van Gogh.
You’ll agree that the first picture is beautiful. Maybe it’s not the most beautiful sunset you’ve ever seen, but it’ll come close. Probably you’ve seen thousands of real sunsets in you live. And probably you’ve seen a few hundred in photos like this one.
But tell me. How often to you take your photo album out of the cupboard to look at one specific photo of a sunset?
I found the second picture a few weeks ago while I was looking for pictures to use in my collages and I hated it immediately. It was quite clear that this was not the kind of painting I could use. So I moved on.
But then I found that there was something about this painting that made me go back an look again.
I just did a little research on the picture and turns out that the two figures on the foreground are photoshopped on top of a painting by van Gogh. As horrible as the result might be it has something that draws me in and has me looking at this painting ones in a while.
Growth
So now for two of my drawings. Christening and First step.
Christening is one of my favorite drawings. It’s a quilt like patchwork of colors. Very pleasing to the eye.
But it is also a one off. The only purpose was to test the colors of a new pencil box. But it leads to nothing.
I could of course draw lots more of those kind of quilt like designs but it would soon become very boring for people to visit this site. Knowing that they would, again, see a quilt.
The second drawing is arguably the most horrible drawing I’ve ever done. But it’s also the first in a set.
It’s the drawing I had to get out of the way before I could try something new. Although I didn’t expect it, I did learn something by drawing it. But more important. Even while I was drawing it I got ideas about what to try next.
At the moment I’m drawing the third one in the set.
I’m finding that although I have some ideas about what it should become it’s also kind of a growing experience. As I’m learning how to use my colors I find more ways to keep the drawing interesting. Not only as an idea in my mind but also as a drawing on paper.
For me, and hopefully also for you, my visitors.
So to answer the question. Do I like my work?
Some times, but I’m not trying to.
I am trying to create pictures that are interesting enough to make you want to steal a second look.
{ 4 comments }
I like your art
Patched and tenacles have my attention
Really great stuff
Smiles
Lisa
thank you.
Although…
Patched and Tenacles are like Christening one offs. The drawing that I use as the background of my Twitter profile is an other one.
As lovely as they are, it’s not very likely that I’m going to do many more of them. So if you visit my site to find drawings like that you might at some point become disappointed.
regards Henk
I think actually we mean the same thing: I call it ‘nice’ or ‘I like it’ but in the end it’s comparable with ‘ínteresting’. For me, art that is interesting, touches my soul, so for me the result is that ‘I like it’. (I had to think (an association) of Matisse by seeing your drawing).
But my question was, how you judged your drawing in realation to the original you’d seen on a site.
I hope you understand better what I meant.
The original had a part where it looked like the white of the paper was shining through the blue. Not something you would normally get when you paint blue. I have no idea how the artist got that effect but I’m certain that it’s something (s)he had to work very hard to get.
As I tried to explain earlier, the fun and the learning experience isn’t in the result but in the journey. If this artist had painted some easy to copy effect and I had made a copy. It would have been only that. A copy.
But in trying to make a interpretation of a painting that is out of my reach. I not only learn about my medium, color pencils. But I also get a better understanding of the kind of pictures I want to draw.
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