Life through the eyes of a mediocre musician

so … I’ve been crazy busy the last couple weeks with family visiting, trip to vegas and more family visiting. I’ve literally had no time to draw which was somewhat of a sigh of relief and also shitty. 

I think I got to a point where I was worried I wasn’t really prepared enough to continue with my drawings but was almost done with my method book, so I kept on putting off drawing hoping that I’d just feel “better” one day and continue.  

So I awake today and rose from the bed, and decided not to tackle any exercises or books, and just draw for the sake of it. I don’t feel that I’m any good yet but I wasn’t really worried about that. I took to eggs and their shadows to try to understand gradation and shadows and then took to the charcoal. 

With No plan at hand, here is the day so far. 

Happy easter all. 

Lopsided egg I

lopsided Egg II

then a sanguine and charcoal egg. 

 … then there’s this guy. Who I have no idea where he came from, but the mood struck me. CHARCOAL!!!!

After these small “drawings” I somehow feel refreshed and ready to take on this adventure again. Have a good one. 

Hozay

*edit* fixed the background and just blended it, looks better I think. 

okay now I’m done.

I’ve halted the posts for a little bit as I noticed I was flying through “Drawing on the right side of the brain.” I expected the book to take me a couple months but instead it took me around two weeks and I was right at the end. I found this unacceptable as I was feeling uneasy and not completely confident about drawing someone else’s portrait. 

Taking these feelings into account I decided to turn to the accompanying workout for “Drawing on the right side of the brain.” Essentially the work book just fleshes out the instruction with supplemental exercises. So I decided to “start over” and head back a few sections and complete the superfluous amounts of exercises. 

Having gone back I realized a jump in the quality of the work I completed. Of course I still have loads of steps to make, but I like what I’m seeing.

Essentially, this exercise(s) pertains two parts, drawing the hand on a plastic picture plane that you rest on your hand. The reason for this is that by drawing on a flat plane you are turning a three dimensional object into a two dimensional object. It works really well. So here’s the exercise(s): 

EXCERPT!!!

1. Rest your hand on a desk or table in front of you (the left hand if you are right-handed, and the right, if you are left- handed) with the fingers and thumb curved upward, pointing toward your face. This is a foreshortened view of your hand. Imagine now that you are about to draw that foreshortened form.

If you are like most of my students, you would simply not know how to go about doing that. It seems far too difficult to draw this three-dimensional form, with its parts moving toward you in space. You would hardly know where to start. The viewfinders and plastic Picture Plane will help you get started.

2. TryouteachoftheViewfinderstodecidewhichsizefitsmost comfortably over your hand, which you should be holding in a foreshortened position with the fingers coming toward you. Men often need the larger, women the smaller-sized Viewfin- der. Choose one or the other.

3. Clip the Viewfinder you have chosen on top of your clear- plastic Picture Plane.

4. Use your felt-tip marker to draw a “format” line on the plastic Picture Plane, running your marker around the inside of the opening of the Viewfinder. A format line forms the outer boundary of your drawing. See Figure 6-4.

5. Now, holding you hand in the same foreshortened position as before, balance the Viewfinder/plastic Picture Plane on the tips of your fingers and thumb. Move it about a bit until the picture-plane seems balanced comfortably.

6. Pickupyouruncappedmarkingpen,gazeatthehandunder the plastic Picture Plane and close one eye. (I’ll explain in the next segment why it is necessary to close one eye. For now, please just do it.) See Figure 6-5.

7. Choose an edge to start your drawing. Any edge will do. With the marking pen, begin to draw on the plastic Picture Plane the edges of the shapes just as you see them. Don’t try to “sec- ond guess” any of the edges. Do not name the parts. Do not wonder why the edges are the way they are. Your job, just as in Upside-Down Drawing and in Pure Contour Drawing, is to draw exactly what you see, with as much detail as you can manage with the marking pen (which is not as precise as a pencil).

8. Besuretokeepyourheadinthesameplaceandkeeponeeye closed. Don’t move your head to try to “see around” the form. Keep it still. (Again, I’ll explain why in the next segment.)

9. Correct any lines you wish by just wiping them off with a moistened tissue on your forefinger. It is very easy to redraw them more precisely.

then there is the second half, Where essentially you take what you drew on the flat plane and transfer it to paper. 

This was completed by myself and I was amazed with the progress. 

The third part is one of the supplemental exercise; again this was completed after I had continued on with the book, but have now decided to return to complete them. So here they are, in order, so you can bask in the glory of my progress with me. 

1. Original Base drawing of my hand to track my progress. 

The Second series here is the initial exercise along with the picture plane drawing. 

I was thoroughly impressed with the above hand, looking back now it looks super crummy, but it was still progress, none the less. 

And lastly is the supplemental drawing, still my hand just holding an object this time. Picture plane, then drawing to finish it off. 

Hozay

BLIND CONTOURS!! 

When I stumbled  upon this ex(c)ercise, I was excited and worried. I’ve heard my girlfriend complain relentlessly about having to do contour drawings for class, so of course why would I wan to do. The moment I brought this up to her her responses and statements were as if I had my own personal cheerleader. “Oh man, they’re cool/you’ll do great/they really help/you’re amazing.” I don’t know which of these statements were true, false or just flattery. 

I ended up putting this ex(c)ercise off for a few days because I was worried about completing them. Turns out they weren’t bad at all. It took a bit of will power to not turn around and at what I was doing, but here are the bullet points. 

EXCERPT!!!

1. Look at the palm of your hand—the left hand if you are right-handed and the right if you are left-handed. Bring your fingers and thumb together to create a mass of wrinkles in your palm. Those wrinkles are what you are going to draw— all of them. I can almost hear you saying, “Are you joking?” or “Forget that!”

2. Sit in a comfortable position with your drawing hand on the drawing paper, holding the pencil and ready to draw. Then, put the pencil down and tape the paper in that prearranged position so it won’t shift around while you are drawing.

3. Set the timer for 5 minutes. In this way, you won’t have to keep track of time, an L-mode function.

4. Then, face all the way around in the opposite direction, keep- ing your hand with the pencil on the drawing paper, and gaze at the palm of the other hand. Be sure to rest that hand on some support—the back of a chair or perhaps on your knee— because you will be holding this rather awkward position for the allotted 5 minutes. Remember, once you start to draw, you will not turn to look at the drawing until the timer goes off. See figure 6-1.

5. Gaze at a single wrinkle in your palm. Place your pencil on the paper and begin to draw just that edge. As your eyes track the direction of the edge very slowly, one millimeter at a time, your pencil will record your perceptions. If the edge changes direction, so does your pencil. If the edge intersects with another edge, follow that new information slowly with your eyes, while your pencil simultaneously records every detail. An important point: Your pencil can record only what you see—nothing more, nothing less—at the moment of see- ing. Your hand and pencil function like a seismograph, responding only to your actual perceptions.

The temptation to turn and look at the drawing will be very strong. Resist the impulse! Don’t do it! Keep your eyes focussed on your hand.

Match the movement of the pencil exactly with your eye movement. One or the other may begin to speed up, but don’t let that happen. You must record everything at the very instant that you see each point on the contour. Do not pause in the drawing, but continue at a slow, even pace. At first you may feel uneasy or uncomfortable: Some students even report sudden headaches or a sense of panic.

6. Do not turn around to see what the drawing looks like until your timer signals the end of 5 minutes.

7. Most important, you must continue to draw until the timer signals you to stop.

8. Ifyouexperiencepainfulobjectionsfromyourverbalmode (“What am I doing this for? This is really stupid! It won’t even be a good drawing because I can’t see what I’m doing,” and so forth), try your best to keep on drawing. The protests from the left will fade out and your mind will become quiet. You will find yourself becoming fascinated with the wondrous complexity of what you are seeing, and you will feel that you could go deeper and deeper into the complexity. Allow this to happen. You have nothing to fear or be uneasy about. Your drawing will be a beautiful record of your deep perception. We are not concerned about whether the drawing looks like a hand. We want the record of your perceptions.

9. Soon,thismentalchatterwillcease,andyouwillfindyourself becoming intensely interested in the complexity of the edges you see in your palm and intensely aware of the beauty of that complex perception. When that change takes place, you will have shifted to the visual mode and again you will be “really drawing.”

10. When the timer signals the allotted time, turn and look at your drawing.

UGH, SO Much to READ!!! I just want to draw. Like a typical “Amurrican!” I want my results and I want them now. Fast, Cheap, easy and FAST! I haven’t had to learn a new “skill” in quite some time, but it’s going well so far. Here are some pictures of what I was blindly contouring. 

Notes written on back are as follows: After the first blind contour I was not completely convinced that I understood the concept. Realizing this I continued to work for another 15 minutes concluding in a total of 20 minutes of blind contour. 

 … I seriously spent 20 minutes doing this, but I can not dwell on that. I must move on. 

These “blogs” are usually up a few days after I complete the ex(c)ercise since I’m not getting paid for this, there’s no real reason to rush. So I’m going to throw this out there, after my the next “project” I completely blew myself away. I still can’t draw, but I’m doing a hell of a lot better than I did when I started. 

Hozay

The following two exercises will be combined as I feel the first is more of a thought provoker than an real exercise. (Also, I keep spelling exercise “excercise.” I don’t know if I should worry that my life is so sedentary that I can’t even spell the word. Lord, help me.)

Faces/Vases. EXCERPT!!!!!

1. Copy the pattern (either Figure 4-2 or 4-3). If you are right- handed, copy the profile on the left side of the paper, facing toward the center. If you are left-handed, draw the profile on the right side, facing toward the center. Examples are shown of both the right-handed and left-handed drawings. Make up your own version if you wish.

2. Next, draw horizontal lines at the top and bottom of your

profile, forming top and bottom of the vase (Figures 4-2 and

4-3). 3. Now, redraw the profile on your “Vase/Faces” pattern. Just

take your pencil and go over the lines, naming the parts as you go, like this: “Forehead … nose … upper lip … lower lip … chin … neck.” You might even do that a second time, re- drawing one more time and really thinking to yourself what those terms mean.

4. Then, go to the other side and start to draw the missing profile that will complete the symmetrical vase.

5. When you get to somewhere around the forehead or nose, you may begin perhaps to experience some confusion or conflict. Observe this as it happens.

6. The purpose of this exercise is for you to self-observe:”How do I solve the problem?”

BEHOLD!! The face vase! Sadly, I didn’t fully comprehend the task and finished in and moved on. After completing the next exercise I realized the reason I didn’t run into any trouble and didn’t gain anything from this study was that I didn’t match up the lines and wasn’t looking at the correlation between the lines. But let us move on. Here is vase-face.

Now, comes the ex(c)ercise where I completely blew myself away. Seriously, this is the moment I realized “oh shit, maybe I CAN do this!” It was excited and so awesome, I did another upside down line drawing. I understand these may not look at much, but go look at my previous entries, it’s clearly an improvement. Solely from drawing these upside down I was able to obtain a smidge of what some would call “talent.” Here is the ex(c)ercise.

EXCERPT!!!!

1. Play music if you like. As you shift into R-mode, you may find that the music fades out. Finish the drawing in one sitting, allowing yourself at least forty minutes—more if possible. And more important, do not turn the drawing right side up until you have finished. Turning the drawing would cause a shift back to L-mode, which we want to avoid while you arelearning to experience the focused R-mode state of aware-ness.

2. You may start anywhere you wish—bottom, either side, or the top. Most people tend to start at the top. Try not to figure out what you are looking at in the upside-down image. It is better not to know. Simply start copying the lines. But remember: don’t turn the drawing right side up!

3. I recommend that you not try to draw the entire outline of the form and then “fill in” the parts. The reason is that if you make any small error in the outline, the parts inside won’t fit. One of the great joys of drawing is the discovery of how the parts fit together. Therefore, I recommend that you move from line to adjacent line, space to adjacent shape, working your way through the drawing, fitting the parts together as you go.

4. If you talk to yourself at all, use only the language of vision, such as: “This line bends this way,” or, “That shape has a curve there,” or “Compared to the edge of the paper (vertical or horizontal), this line angles like that,” and so on. What you do not want to do is to name the parts.

5. When you come to parts that seem to force their names on you—the H-A-N-D-S and the F-A-C-E—try to focus on these parts just as shapes. You might even cover up with one hand or finger all but the specific line you are drawing and then uncover each adjacent line. Alternatively, you might shift to another part of the drawing.

6. At some point, the drawing may begin to seem like an inter- esting, even fascinating, puzzle. When this happens, you will be “really drawing,” meaning that you have successfully shifted to R-mode and you are seeing clearly. This state is easily broken. For example, if someone were to come into the room and ask, “How are you doing?” your verbal system would be reactivated and your focus and concentration would be over.

7. You may even want to cover most of the reproduced drawing with another piece of paper, slowly uncovering new areas as you work your way down through the drawing. A note of cau- tion, however: Some of my students find this ploy helpful, while some find it distracting and unhelpful.

8. Remember that everything you need to know in order to draw the image is right in front of your eyes. All of the infor- mation is right there, making it easy for you. Don’t make it complicated. It really is as simple as that.

At this point in the book I decided that even if I felt that the directions felt a little outdated and silly, I was going to follow them. That brings us these works of “art.” 

BEHOLD!!!

so this one isn’t even finished. I got frustrated at this point stopped because the drawing was clearly not going to fit. Notes written on the back of the drawing are as follows: You are a piece of shit that can’t even draw lines … haha, just kidding. Seriously though, notes written on the back of drawing are as follows: Picture was started off centered. decision to restart was made approx. twenty minutes into ex(c)ercise. (Not that there is no spell check in my life so I actually did spell exercise wrong. Again, my life is so sedentary I can’t even spell exercise correctly. Sad … )

Attempt # 2.

It is at this point that I’m realize I’m still drawing the lines that I’m seeing but am unable to really see the correlation from line to line. I could draw one line as I see it, but I’ll see the next in a different light and not how it’s supposed to be see in length next to the others.  If you notice the upper left most area where there is pencil, there has been some erasing. It was at the hands that I realized my spacing was incorrect again and I could did not want to continue.

Notes on the back of drawing are as follows: 3/4/12 Same issue as before. I can not seem to be able to understand  special displacement.

Let’s continue on the attempt three. (all three attempted were made one after the other, all on the same day. May 4th 2012 The year of our Cthulhu. 

Attempt 3.

GREAT SUCCESS!!! 

As my third attempt, I made sure to make sure I was making sure I was keeping on eye on the relationship of each line to another. Notes on the back of this drawing as follows: Badass … 

The feeling of accomplishment was overwhelming, so much so that I decided to take on another upside down drawing, here it is. 

Compared to the flat faced no-dimensional  self-portrait I completed one day before this, I can honestly say I’m impressed with what I churned out. It’s not great, but it’s a giant step in the right direction. Horse was completed on 3/5/12 with the notes on back as follows: After several attempts at drawing and restarting, this has been the easiest. I attribute this to understanding that there is correlations between each line.

On we go. 

Hozay

Self preservation in its most elementary form is more like it.

In the spirit of full disclosure, because let’s face it, no one is reading this, and if you are, you’re probably here to judge so I may as well give you fodder to judge with.

Here is the text regarding The first set of exercises in “drawing on the right side of the brain,” along with the resulting  ”art” that I decided was appropriate and fit the description of the rules and prompts given.

Pre-instruction drawing #1: Your “Self-Portrait”

1. Tape a stack of two or three sheets of paper to your drawing board or work in your pad of paper. (Stacking the sheets pro- vides a “padded” surface to draw on—much better than the rather hard surface of the drawing board.)

2. Sit at arm’s length (about 2 to 2+1/2 feet) from a mirror. Lean your board up against the wall, resting the bottom of the board on your lap.

3. Lookatthereflectionofyourheadandfaceinthemirrorand draw your “Self-Portrait.”

4. When you have finished, title, date, and sign the drawing in the lower right-hand or lower left-hand corner.

Pre-instruction drawing #2: A person, drawn from memory

1. Call up in your mind’s eye an image of a person—perhaps someone from the past or a person you know now. Or you may recall a drawing you did in the past or a photograph of a person well known to you.

2. Tothebestofyourability,makeadrawingofthatperson. You may draw just the head, a half-figure, or the whole figure.

3. When you have finished, title, sign, and date your draw- ing.

Pre-instruction drawing #3: Your hand

1. Seat yourself at a table to draw.

2. If you are right-handed, draw your left hand in whatever position you choose. If you are left-handed, draw your right hand.

3. Title, date and sign your drawing.

Once again, in the spirit of full disclosure, these are god awful. I understand that, so let’s just move on quickly. 

(as a foot note, I don’t sign these “drawings.” Something about it, seems awfully pretentious and rubs me the wrong way.)

One more thing … Look at that ‘STACHE!!!

Hozay