Rough Work

Sketchbooks!! *fist shaking

Love em’ or hate em’ ?

Opening a new sketchbook is simultaneously a wonderful and painful exercise. I love sketchbooks, for a while there it felt like I had 10 sketchbooks on the go. This is because, to me, sketchbooks are synonymous with fresh starts.

I always think that if I get a new sketch book that my work will somehow step up to the occassion, like the fact I own something new a clean and fresh will force me to get better. This feeling of confidence is the wonderful part, the part that makes me feel like I’m actually not too bad at this drawing thing. Then comes the second half.

Opening a new sketch book and having a blank page staring back at you is an incredibly daunting experience. You feel lke there’s nothing you can put there that’s going to look right and so you just stare at it.

This happened to me yesterday, except I forced myself to start, I decided…I’ll draw a picture of my niece Devynn. She’s cute and I’m not good at cute. What better way to challenge myself. I printed off a picture and some samples of Sarah Mensiga’s work (she’s great at cute, wistful, and everything else). I was ready to start.

I tried, I really did. I tried to be more thoughtful in my approach, take my time without being too slow that it becomes ridiculous. I studied my inspriation to try and capture the cuteness…and all I could get was craziness. She looked like Chucky and I ruined the first page of my new sketchbook (that I bought in August and was too intimidated to start filling). However, the plus side of the new sketch book is perferated paper. I simply pulled out the drawing (I scanned it and tried to clean it up…no such luck so far) and I’m ready to start again.

But “The Dark Knight” came out today and I’ll be watching that tonight, so I don’t know if I’ll get around to any drawing. I think if I’m going to try cute again I need to start with animals.

Note: The picture of the sketch book above is acutally the one I opened last night, I grabbed that pic from barnes and noble website. It’s designed by SCAD students and I picked it up while I was down in Savannah getting married this summer.