Saturday, March 19, 2011

Drawing Lab

An artist in Mexico, Geninne Zlatkis, has a blog that I have been reading for years. She was recently featured in a book written by another artist/blogger, Carla Sonheim.

The creative exercises in this book are probably familiar to people who have taken art classes. Draw with your non-dominant hand, draw without lifting your pen, draw without looking at your paper. One of the quotes in the introduction is that the lessons make people feel like "being a child again, but you get to do it [draw] as an adult."

This was not the case for me.  I was a scared little kid when it came to art class at school.  Give me a stack of books from the library and I was happy for days but a blank page and a marker with instructions to do whatever I wanted freaked me out every time.  I remember drawing scalloped waves, a sun in the sky and a ship with curling smoke from a stack every. single. time.  I could never think of another subject.

Now the list of things I like to draw starts with A (animals) and ends with Z (zentangles).  There are birds, buildings, cars, doors, faces, flowers, fonts and many other things on my list and I am no longer afraid of a white piece of paper.  Sometimes it is good to grow up and leave your childhood fears behind.

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