April 28, 2006
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My people drawings were much better this week. The interesting thing is that I went back and looked at what I have now dubbed the "Hitler O'Keefe" drawing (see the last blog, below or here). When I looked at it again, I realized it wasn't as bad as I thought. What I first saw as a Hitler mustache was more evident as the shadow I intended it to be, so I decided it was just that I was looking at it for over an hour when I made the decision as to how it looked. The truth is, it wasn't as bad as I thought. The other, though, was just as bad as I thought. Huge eyes stared at me, more like a Picasso painting than the intended realistic drawing. So, I practiced. Now, many people have the wrong idea of what practice means. They think it means doing it over and over again until you get it right. Never, however, is it explained how you get it right. The key to practice is realizing what you are doing wrong. If you never make that discovery, you cannot hope to correct it. But after you make that discovery, you must still have the knowledge of how you correct it and be willing to make the change. Practice is not a place for stubbornness. If you want to be stubborn, go become a CEO. You'll waste too much time doing the wrong thing again and again. When you have to compensate for what you're doing wrong, which is what usually happens with size in art, it's not uncommon to overcompensate. When I tried to compensate for the large eyes, I started by getting the eyes right. Then, when I looked over what else I had done about fifteen minutes later, I discovered that the ears and hands were now too small. The drawing came out good, anyway, but I still have to practice. In my next blog, I'll talk about the huge chiuroscuro I'm doing and the core problem I'm having.
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