Drawing class

After many years of not drawing, it's been like coming to visit an old and beloved friend who you had a falling out with over some ridiculous thing. The ridiculous thing being my neurotic drive for perfection, which can set up any artist for a path to disappointment and harshness...which kills the joy and creativity. The other ridiculous thing was thinking that just because I couldn't earn a decent salary doing art that I should stop doing it. Crazy, stupid.

It's been a big step to return to this old friend. To find a class, sign up. It feels so right to be a studio, surrounded by easels and artists. A whole building of people all devoted to art.

Yesterday in class the familiar craziness crept in as I stole glances at other students' work and started to compare mine to theirs, coming up short mainly. "Oh, look at how cool that turned out." "Wow, what an interesting way to capture that..." "Why does yours look like crap?" I work at shutting off those voices almost as much as I do on the actually drawing itself.

Speaking of which, I did a good job in class with my drawings. We did blind contour, gesture, and contour drawings...one after the other, timed....It was fun, very different than how I normally would draw, and experimental. When we put up our stuff on the wall for critique one of the students shot me an admiring smile and told me one of my contour drawings was good. The teacher complimented both of my drawings...He said I'm good at creating an interesting composition that uses the space well, and I did a good gesture drawing too. I felt....like a million bucks by the end of class. I smiled as I lugged my stuff to the car. Artists need to work out just to carry the gear around.