Fear

I started a second drawing last night on Dura-Lar, knocking in all of the essentials in vine charcoal. I’ve become more comfortable with the scale of these drawings.  It took some time to get used to, as there’s a lot of moving around, standing back, etc. for me to even see what I’m doing in the entire drawing.

Once I had the vine charcoal drawing complete, my fear of the etching ink settled in very quickly. You can see that I did just a little bit of etching ink on the pelvic area in the drawing on the left hand side, but I’ll admit that I got stage fright and chickened out.  These drawings are intended to be very gestural and loose, and I knew last night that I was approaching the etching ink as if I was walking on egg shells. I could feel how tight and careful the drawing was feeling, so I stopped before I did any more damage. Just this week I was talking to my freshmen at RISD about battling the nervousness that comes with starting a large drawing and here I am struggling with the exact same thing.

I had worried before I moved into the studio that I was going to dread going there at night after a long day.  Actually, it’s been quite the opposite, I’ve been eager to go every time and the studio has a great, positive vibe that I am really enjoying.  Yesterday I had a full day, ate dinner, went to the gym for an hour, and then went to the studio for about an hour and a half. It’s not ideal to only be there for a short period, but my feeling is that it’s better to do a little bit at a time frequently rather than do only one very long session once a week.  I’m also a musician, (I play the oboe) and it’s the same with practicing an instrument. I would rather practice every day for 15 minutes than practice once a week for 3 hours. You can build continuity by working this way that helps maintain focus and concentration.