I like to visit Danny Gregory’s site, just because I really like how he draws things, and and how he gets excited about his passion of drawing what he sees. A recent entry was even a bit of a drawing course, and interactive introduction to his way of seeing and drawing. I am not linking to this particular entry, because his entire site is very nice and one should go and visit it and maybe even follow the links and buy his books. (I want to buy them, I will, soon, promise.)
I think Danny made me realize a little more that while we both clearly draw a lot, our understanding of the journey is a bit different. Danny writes: “Drawing is seeing. If you can see, you can draw. But can you see?”…
For me drawing is not so much seeing something and then grasping it and trying to put it on paper, as planting and watching of the process of drawing itself.
I think Picasso said something like:”I don’t draw what I see, I draw what I know.”
I do not even know what I draw…
I try to draw what I do not know.
And sometimes I am not even sure I know it after I drew it… it is a bit of an infinite exploration of creation…
Yes, I sometimes sit in front of something and then think about it and draw a playful translation of it on paper. And then the next time I draw it, it is a bit of a bread version of the first drawing, the next generation and so on…
I sometimes draw with an old sketchbook open, and the items that make it to paper are some really odd shapes that are layers and layers away from reality…
I sometimes really just plant little seeds and then the drawing just grows in some very odd ways…
Many drawing are almost as much removed from reality as words could be…
Just the idea that one could describe anything by making monochrome outlines on paper… I guess putting a hand on paper and tracing it will result in a drawing of a hand-outline… but does this mean that my hands have outlines? Aren’t outlines inventions of our brain as well? Aren’t outlines a bit of a shorthand for what we actually perceive as reoccurring and expected variations in focus, when we look at things?… (where are the outlines on a ball?, or a piece of bread?, or a flame?)
Describing a ball as a circle of ink on paper seems for me to be in a similar category as naming an animal…
Yet, just placing a circle of ink on paper and… well… not more than that… hmm… I don’t know… it could be anything really…
I really can not offer a solution here… and I do not even know the right questions, it seems…
And please, please do not think that I am trying to suggest that there is a right and a wrong way… there really is not… I don’t think there is…
For me there is not…
I seem to have a long way to go… I guess I like not knowing certain things…