So tired this morning and not sure why [entirely] I stopped off at the florist on the Highway to pick up a bunch of lilies to draw this morning. The florist apologised this his lilies were too fresh and therefore not open for my drawing pleasure, and gave me a um.. that cabbage looking thing.. bracksus? okay that's what he said, someone help me out here that's what he said but i have no idea how to spell it. ANYWAY. I arrived to my Wednesday Art Group to a very cramped workspace and a lot of extra painting ladies hogging all the space.
The mentor of the group - who refers to me as "my drawing lady" - gave me a timer set to 15 minutes. "right," she said, "is this the direction you want to go?" head nodding to the purple cabbagey plant. "yes," i replied and invoked the royal voice "we are tired this morning and wish to draw quietly amongst ourselves." "very well." she said, ignoring me "you have 15 minutes to draw it" setting the timer and plonking it on the table "go!"
Holy crap.. don't you understand that we are tired??
I pushed a piece of paper onto the desk, grabbed my pencil and started drawing. Can you *see* how complicated the shape of that cabbage is? My first attempt was a mess, so after my buzzer went off I turned the paper over and reset the timer. "use a bigger drawing instrument" she buzzed past me helping the painters in the group. I grabbed a fat stick of graphic and drew again - 15 mintues flew by. Another mess of unfocused markings on the paper. She came to check. "hmm" she said taking my paper and folding it into fours putting it aside. "grab another, smaller piece of paper, use a pencil" setting the timer she said "5 minutes, go!"
Prissy prissy lightweight drawing with no hope of any substance by the time the buzzer went off. I reset the timer, repeated the drawing. and again, and again. After a while she came to check my work, gave me some words of advice from watching me work "you don't have any preliminary structure lines" she said "you need to see the shape as a whole" I know I don't do this, I creep my way across the page like gingerly stepping over puddles connecting positive space with negative in an attempt to "get things right" I followed her advice, drew another 4 or 5 five minute drawings.
For a cabbage break, and while she explained colour mixing to the painting ladies, I started drawing the chair by the Exit door. As she was talking (i typo'd 'stalking' there which may have been more appropriate) she wandered over to my subject adding another chair to it, and carried on with her talk. Unfortunately, also during her talk, one of the painting ladies knicked off with one of the chairs so my composition feng shui was all out of whack.
So there, you see below, a mishmash of sketches of nothing really. I was fighting the clock and the complexity of my subject. It did me the world of good [royal] but if we thought we were tired before class, we sure in heck know what tired is now.
