The Inuit drawings are giving me a little more trouble than I anticipated, so inking these drawings has given me a nice break. Doing something I"m good at helps me to bolster my confidence when I'm trying to learn something new, and there are a number of things in the new piece that I've never drawn before. The invisible part of the illustration process is all the bad drawings that are required to make the good ones, and I draw quite a few to get to mine, usually on cheap bond paper. I can always print the drawings in blue on nice paper, later. This is the advantage of focusing on each element of the drawing individually and assembling them later: I can spend the time I need on each element to get it right.
The difference between good draftsmanship and passable draftsmanship is persistence of one kind or another. There are artists who can get by with passable draftsmanship because they're good at something else, like color and composition and texture, or a unique point of view. There are artists that have a practiced and natural talent for draftsmanship--but that practice must be constantly maintained and cultivated. I fall somewhere in the middle. Dividing my time between writing and drawing, I've never been the draftsman I've wished I was, but I'm always improving, and what I lack in natural ability I try to make up for in perseverance.
No comments:
Post a Comment