Drawing on the Past
When I was probably five I would spend all my time telling stories in various formats. Pretending I was a DJ or on television, writing, and drawing my own comics. It's the drawing I want to talk about today. I wasn't particularly good at it, stick figures and blobby shapes as five year olds are prone to depict, but I did it almost every day. Not with any particular goal in mind or any specific subject matter, just drawing for the sake of drawing. Because it was fun.
Like most kids, I got caught in the fishing net that is K-12. Drawing became less important. Still fun, just more infrequent. Art class really should have been called Crafts class in public school because it was more like a creativity sink to get the nervous mental energy out; like recess for the brain instead of the body. Drawing wasn't really encouraged. I doodled though. All the time. The notes I was supposed to be taking were full of amateur recreations of popular comic/cartoon characters. The ones I got really good at around my sophomore year were Ninja Turtles. Needed a sweet Raphael pic? I was your guy.
High school was over and I didn't go to college, not right away. I played lots of Dungeons & Dragons, though, which meant a whole new font of inspiration. While working in a factory I spent my weekends parked in a booth at Waffle House with sketchbooks, filling myself with sweet tea and hash browns while filling my pages with wizards, knights, and monsters.
When college finally happened it was hands on media tech. Photography, video, eventually animation; all mediums supported almost exclusively by drawing. Back to my childhood habits of telling stories. In that place, where I got to hang out with five year old me, it all came naturally. I excelled. Then art school happened.
Suddenly drawing wasn't fun anymore; it was work. I won't say it wasn't good for me, I saw remarkable improvement, but I sort of lost my passion for it. It got fun again for a semester when I took the Comics class, but it was so difficult to hold on to that excitement afterward and I let it slip away from me.
Even now, I have probably a dozen sketchbooks on my shelves, most of them at least half full. Pencils ranging from HB to 6B fill half of a remote caddy on my desk, fountain and ballpoint pens in the other half; all of them collecting dust. I keep buying sketchbooks: 300 weight paper, card stock, unlined Moleskein, parchment. I keep not touching any of it. Like the desire is there, but the motivation is still playing Hide and Seek.
For the last several years, my job has been to teach. I'm in a unique position that I am able to utilize my education directly, helping others to learn the technical skills they need to create as well as offering aesthetic advice on projects. Recently, corporate direction has changed my role somewhat. I'm not just teaching skills anymore, I now get to create and inspire. New tools have become available and in preparation for my new responsibilities, I took advantage of them.
I know I've talked about the iPad Pro here before. I think it was in my post about my tattoo. I even shared the digital painting I made that was used as the blueprint. This time, I want to talk about the app that has me creating again. Procreate (great app, terrible name).
One of the nicest features, in my mind, is that Procreate records every brushstroke for a time-lapse which can later be exported and shared. With that in mind, below is a video of the very first painting I made in this app. I used a photo in the "Ice" photo gallery, a broken fairy statue lying in the snow, as my subject and I think it turned out pretty well. Well enough that I've already made a couple more paintings and, as I get them loaded to YouTube, I'll share here as well.
