On My Stoop

There are times when I take a step back from my drawings, and try to look at them with fresh eyes.  I wonder, what am I drawn to in these drawings?

I seem to be drawing lots and lots of tangly lines these days. The more lines the better.  The more they intersect and criss-cross, the more I can lean into the drawing and hang with it a while.

Do drawings show something of our lives at the time of making them? When there are lots of chaotic lines, does this show the craziness of my everyday life?  When the drawings are a bit wonky or off-kilter, does this reveal the slightly out-of-balance feel of each day crashing in?  Drawings, I believe, both reveal the state of things, AND are a means to make sense of things:  to wrestle the tangly lines into something that makes a bit of sense, and to celebrate the wonky aspects by leaving them be and flourishing them with color.

Here are a couple of quotes I like:

Drawing is the artist’s most direct and spontaneous expression, a species of writing: it reveals, better than does painting, his true personality. (Edgar Degas)

Drawing is intimate and reveals exactly where we are, and in a culture that isn’t comfortable with that, it frightens many. You just cannot cheat when you draw. (Sandy Davison)

Drawing is the discipline by which I constantly discover the world. (Frederick Franck)

Draw everywhere and all the time. An artist is a sketchbook with a person attached. (Irwin Greenberg)

0 thoughts on “On My Stoop

  1. Connie Cohn says:

    Love the drawing — all the colors and tangly lines. And your thoughts. Thanks for sharing! Love the quotes too – especially “an artist is a sketchbook with a person attached”!

  2. danscanvas.blogspot.com says:

    I think this is a great drawing! If this drawing is you it is wild, excited, and free! There is no calm in this plant. My drawings definitely reflect my moods; calm, my drawings are more careful, when restless, the drawings reflect that.

  3. ann says:

    The linear quality may seem chaotic but the drawing, along with the subject and color, to me looks very joyful. Wonderful drawing and thanks for the quotes too. I have always liked that one by Franck.

  4. Timaree/freebirdsings says:

    I don’t ever get squiggly and if uptight I tend to skip drawing but I agree they say things about us or how we feel. This is very busy as was the messy room in the previous post. Perhaps you pick busy complicated stuff to distract your mind rather than reveal a cluttered mind though. Two sides of the same coin but different still. One gives your mind a rest from thinking too hard for too long and the other, revealing your cluttered mind just says you have too much to think about. Maybe a drawing like this takes care of both giving you the whole coin!

    • jenpedwards says:

      this is very intriguing, Timaree! I think you might be right…the more complicated the line-work, the more my brain has to slow down and really see. Thanks for that!

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