Aw, precious! Okay, anyway, I'm not going to get into who they are and why they're hugging, because this blog isn't about Trigun. You'd never know it, though, since I probably average one Trigun reference per blog post. (Trigun reference for this blog post: check!) It's supposed to be about art and creativity, so I'm going to talk about drawing.
A friend asked me recently if I follow all the proper steps when I draw a picture, such as starting with a stick-person-like skeleton, then drawing rough shapes for a body, etc. Yes. I do. It helps you drawing better, but the truth is, that's only a small part of why I do it. The bigger reason is that whenever I sit down to draw, I find a blank page rather intimidating. It makes me feel better if I can say to myself, "You don't have to draw a good picture, just draw some good stick people... There, that wasn't so hard. Now draw some bodies onto the stick people... Good! That looks pretty okay! Now some clothes..." I do it for all projects, not just drawings. I break it down into ridiculously tiny steps. It makes me feel better, and makes me feel like I accomplished something even when the project isn't done yet. One day I sat down to work on this drawing and said, "I don't care how much I get done, just as long as the coat is drawn properly." I drew the coat and then set the drawing aside again and felt pretty awesome about myself. I drew a coat, dang it! I accomplished something! (I'm not sure whether this shows that I have wisdom in tackling a project, or I just have a need for instant gratification. I think it's the latter.)
I've found that, as the years go by, it has come to take me FOR-EV-ER to finish a drawing. Some people can sit down and pop out something great in a couple of hours. Not me. When I first started taking my drawings seriously, back in high school, I went through a phase where I popped out a picture a week. This drawing that I just finished I started over a month ago. So while working on this drawing, I tried to pay attention to what I was doing so I could track down the true source of the problem. I found two underlying suspects.
The first can be summed up thus:
In high school: "I have five minutes to spare! Quickly! To the sketchbook!"
Now: "I have five minutes to spare! Quickly! To facebook!"
Yeah, I don't think I really need to expound on that one. It's pretty self-explanatory. Shame on me.
The second cause for slowness is that this is how things went when working on my drawing. Sit down with paper and pencil. Draw a while. Everything's going good. Grab a manga to find a reference picture. (For those who don't know, a manga is more or less a Japanese comic book. I own Trigun's manga.) Realize I've been reading the manga instead of drawing. Draw some more. Grab a different manga to reference something else. Realize I'm reading again. Draw some more. Flip through mangas for a different reference. Get distracted by a cool part. Draw some more. [Later.] Draw Vash's coat. Think about how, when Vash's coat gets really billowy, he looks like an octopus. Doodle Vash in the margins of the paper as a Vash-topus. Doodle another character's reaction to the Vash-topus. Draw some more. [Later.] Wonder if I should have drawn part of it differently. Trace the drawing on tracing paper and sketch the change on the tracing paper for a side-to-side comparison. Decide to make the change. Continue drawing on the tracing paper, turning Vash into a zombie that is eating Lina's brains. Get back to drawing.
Okay, so the second one isn't likely to change any time soon. I always get distracted finding reference pictures, whether in a manga or on the internet or wherever. And it's practically tradition for me to doodle something in the margins of a picture. I've been doing that for years. Every "professional" drawing gets graced by a quick doodle or comic strip relating to the picture. It's not that I think I'm ADD or anything, it's just that I... um... well... I mean, I don't think I'm ADD. It's just that... um...
... what was I talking about, again?
Anyway, it would be really nice if I could kick the internet addiction (it's not just facebook) and go back to having my sketchbook as my go-to source of entertainment when I have spare time. I just bought a shiney, new sketchbook, so I'll keep my fingers crossed.
Nice Drawing!!! It was well worth the time. Haha, you put in to words just what happens to me when I try to draw. I get distracted so easily. That's a really good point about having small little victories. I have to do that for a lot of other things too.
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