Catfacehorse

Here are two feathers I have painted over the last two nights. It has been such a relaxing way to unwind after work - they are almost meditative to draw with all their tiny lines.

I noticed the blog has been very greyscale lately, so I painted the coloured feather to change the tone a bit. Then I ended up painting another black and white feather I had lying around as well.

On another note, there is a wonderful Etsy shop set up by good-hearted arty people who have donated their goods with all proceeds going to the Red Cross Victorian bushfires appeal. I bought a beautiful print by Bridget Farmer, destined to go on my desk at work.

Reading A Short Course in Intellectual Self Defense this morning, a section on the construction of perception jumped out at me. Our brains have an amazing capacity to construct our perceptions  so that our world appears full of stable phenomena. I learned this way back in high school psychology, but it just struck me this afternoon that here might lie part of the joy of drawing for me.

Our brains perceive an object as having constant qualities, even though changes in light or position can change the object’s appearance. For example, I will see my familiar red bedspread out of the corner of my eye as red, even though peripheral vision doesn’t register colour. Mastering drawing depends on you tricking your brain into seeing things the way they really appear, before some of that interpretation. I need to actually see that the box isn’t perfectly square, it’s skewed towards me; that the arm pointed at me isn’t long, it’s foreshortened. For me, that flip into the seeing that you do for drawing is like magic, like seeing both sides of the visual illusion or seeing the 3D image in a magic eye picture. It also takes a fair bit of concentration for me, which is part of the fun.

Below is a picture I drew nearly three years ago that broke a long drawing drought and was followed by another long drawing drought. It took me ages, nearly two hours, as I needed to concentrate really hard to see the form of the objects, rather than perceive a lemon, capsicum and garlic.

Owen and I went for a picnic in the park near our place a few days ago.  A twenty minute bike ride through the sunshine and (thankfully) cool air and we were at the bend in the creek. After a small spread of thermos tea, bread, cheese, olives, orange cake and homemade lemonade, we lay in the grass talking about how great it was to be on holiday.

I picked up a selection of fallen eucalyptus leaves around us on the ground, with gorgeous rusty reds and blushing browns.

I went for a walk through the bush at my parent’s place in Tasmania this afternoon, looking for things to draw. I picked up blue-gum nuts, brown gumnuts with a cross on top like little hot cross buns and a tiny white animal skull nestled in the leaf litter.

I sat down to draw the skull, spending lots of time trying to get the intricacies just right. I finished the shading with my pen and sat back to look at it. It sucked. I couldn’t quite put my finger on why it didn’t work, perhaps the relationships between the shapes weren’t quite right. It just looked wrong in a funny sort of way.

This often happens for me the first time I draw something, it seems to take me one go at drawing something new and complex before I can see it properly. I am going to have another try tomorrow, and see if it comes out any better. I don’t find I have this problem if the object is flattened out into 2D already. The picture below is a watercolour I did from a little business card-sized image of beetles, from the back of a Museum admission ticket.

Next here (I hope) will be a decent drawing of a skull. For now, I am enjoying the learning process.

Things are good right now. I am ramping up to Christmas, yet managing to ramp up the drawing as well. It helps that Christmas is usually a creative time for me anyway. For the last four years I have been too broke to buy presents (and Owen and I have an abundance of siblings and parents between the two of us), so instead I have made presents. I have stencilled T-Shirts, bottled chutneys, sewed book bags, and stamped badges.

This year I have been a little busier, and with little extra money from work I have decided to ease the pressure and buy some lovely handmade things.  I have managed to keep drawing by finding little snatches of time here and there - after dinner, in my lunch break, or sneakily during a long day of presentations. (I just think of it as doodling, but with a purpose.)

Here are some the products of those snatches of time.

P.S.  - Leave a comment, I love to chat