The whole idea of drawing has been on my mind recently so I was pleased to read Rebecca Cusworth’s post on the subject, (also because I’m a huge fan of early/pre -renaissance art). She writes :
I personally think it sickly self-indulgent to draw with mirror like accuracy, I used to do it, shh people away but secretly adore their coo’s and adulations that I was ‘so talented’. And I can only speak for myself again here, but when I drew like that I wasn’t exploring anything, it was a simple superficial exercise of ability. Now if I was to create a representational image I use my camera, I reserve my drawings for notions, suggestion and whispers.’
Art college does something funny to drawing. It (when I went) pulled it, stretched it, challenged it, shattered it and rebuilt my thoughts around it. And by and large I moved away from it or at least from the relationship I had with it.
Yesterday my husband came back from a walk in the woods carrying a whole deer skull complete with full antlers, the sort that cries out to be nailed above a rather grander fireplace than we possess. The children hid and forbade us to keep it in the house so it now sits on the picnic table outside. Yesterday, as I put the rubbish out I stopped and looked at it closely. It had the most exquisite delicate little wiggly line down the centre of the skull and instantly, I got an urge to draw it. The dog was looking too and I thought, how weird that you feel no urge at all to draw, that we both stand here and I immediately want to draw and you have no such compulsion (yeah, I know he’s got paws but come on, he could scratch his nose in the dirt if he was that keen). So what is it that I’m doing, recording, documenting? testing my skills, looking for an ooh or an aah from someone? It can’t be just that. Of course my head gives me the usual response, photograph it, what’s the point in reproducing a purely acurate representation?
Sometime ago in my last blog I recorded the time my daughter asked me to draw her as acurately as I could while we waited for my son in piano lessons. This is something I would not have done off my own bat for all the reasons above. But I was deeply surprised at how much pleasure I got from it. Pure relaxing pleasure. There were no other demands on the drawing, I had forgotten what that felt like. So why do we draw!
