Something to Work With

Universal truths can be found everywhere.  I found one in an online drawing class.  Dave Malan's course wasn't intended to be philosophical or life changing, but I ended up taking it as such.  While I did learn a new way to approach my drawings (which was a game changer in itself), I found what he said about drawing and getting started on a project to mean much more.

In the class, the teacher showed us how to start with basic shapes.  Squares. Circles. Triangles.  So basic that they didn't even look like much of anything.  The teacher would often say "There.  Now we have something to work with." From there we would build medium shapes, smaller shapes, adding more detail.  As we worked, we'd find mistakes.  Stepping back with our eyes out of focus, we could see the subtle relationships of what made up the image.  This eye lines up with this neck line.  This ear is too low because it doesn't line up with the brow.  Slowly and surely we came closer and closer to a drawing that resembled the image we were working from.  We refined again and again.

Normally with my art, I feared both sides of the process of creation.  First, I feared a blank canvas.  The empty space seemed daunting and I found life easier if I did something else rather than to commit to putting something down on paper.  Second, I shamed myself for not getting the image right the first time around.  I saw my initial lines as permanence and in that permanence I became stubborn and ashamed. I left lines and marks that were wrong just because they were there and not because they were in the right place.  I didn't see putting something down as an opportunity to refine.

But don't we do that with so much?  We either don't start for fear of getting it wrong or become stuck once we start because we didn't get it right the first time and are too stubborn or wrongheaded to see that we constantly have an opportunity to refine.  When I look at my life right now, I have a start there.  Something has been put down.  If I step back and look unfocused and blurry eyed, I can see where things align and things that are misplaced.  But now I have the opportunity to refine.  I have something to work with.