Shouting into the Void and Hoping Somebody Hears Me
Daily sketch from 11/21/17: Audrey Hepburn
My 26th birthday is in two and a half weeks. I know it's nothing to fret about-- there are a lot of years ahead-- but as 2017 comes to a close it's a good time to take stock of my life. My successes, my failures, my growth, and my atrophy. Because it's easy to get busy, collect days like buttons in a jar-- but my birthday always serves as something of a reckoning. Here we are, a whole year older, and what's there to show for it?
This is the long way of saying I've started doing daily sketches. And dammit, I'm going to keep doing daily sketches. Because I've finally got a routine that works: I'm always exhausted after a full day at the office, whereas I'm brimming with energy in the morning, while I'm getting dressed. So, I get up at 5:30(!) AM, I'm dressed and ready by 7 AM, and from 7-9, I draw.
I've known for a long time that if I wanted to seriously pursue art as a career, I'd have to bite the bullet and start drawing (outside of my full time job) every day. There are a lot of things that have prevented me from taking that step: lack of time, laziness, fear. A routine is critical to practicing a skill enough to really improve at it. Failure to commit to a routine has sabotaged my efforts to practice many times in the past. No more. My professor in college, Ben Sowards, used to say that sometimes you have to choose between work and sleep. I used to choose sleep-- now I'm choosing work.
As for the laziness-- sometimes when I'm not feeling up to drawing, or I've had a couple bad sketches in a row, it's easy to go watch a couple episodes of my new favorite TV show instead of sitting down to draw. I don't always want to draw. But this is my craft, and I owe it my daily attention-- not just my attention on the occasional good day. I need to hone my skills, hammer out my flaws.
Daily sketch from 11/26/17: "The Silence in the Snowstorm," painted between two different airports.
And anyway-- sometimes a bad streak can turn around. Over the Thanksgiving break, I was in Utah visiting my family. I tried to continue my daily sketches with limited success. Most of what I produced was overwrought and unsatisfying. Then, yesterday, as I sat waiting in two different airports, I produced one of my favorite sketches since I started daily drawing.
Now, as for the fear: fear is no stranger to an artist. I've felt for a long time that my sketches weren't consistently good enough, or weren't fast enough, to place before a global audience day after day. It's a daunting task to sit down every morning and say: "Okay, you've got two hours to make something. And you'd better do it well, because when it's over you need something to show for it." It's a lot of pressure. But the pressure has been good for me-- I've far exceeded my own expectations, and I'm getting better already.
I say "global audience" but I don't have much of a following. Mostly old acquaintances, friends, family, coworkers-- my network as an artist is infinitesimal. And that's my own fault. As artist Freddie Robins put it, "Keep reminding people you exist." This mantra is used repeatedly throughout What They Didn't Teach You In Art School by Rosalind Davis and Annabel Tilley, and Austin Kleon reinforces that same philosophy in one of my favorite books about being an artist, Show Your Work, where he recommends that artists "share something small every day."
For the past three years, I've done nothing to build a network. I've squirreled my work away under a rock, written the occasional blog entry, updated my portfolio with pieces I feel could be better. Well, this is me taking action. This is me sticking my work in front of the internet every day-- waving a big red banner that says, "Hey! Here I am! Notice me!" And make no mistake-- I'm not a master of my craft nor do I believe I'm anywhere near mastery. I'm still a journeyman with a long way to go. But, as stated in Show Your Work:
"Whatever the nature of your work, there is an art to what you do, and there are people who would be interested in that art, if only you presented it to them in the right way. In fact, sharing your process might actually be most valuable if the products of your work aren't easily shared, if you're still in the apprentice stage of your work, if you can't just slap up a portfolio and call it a day, or if your process doesn't necessarily lead to tangible finished products."
So, without further ado, here are the first of my daily sketches, and I'll talk to you again soon.
