I have a weird relationship with drawing and painting. I’m utterly ignorant, have never taken so much as a weekend workshop, couldn’t tell you if that Italian word describes a painting technique or a musical instruction. I’ve figured out some stuff, just playing—some stuff about light and shadow and perspective, at least. You can generally tell what (or who) it’s meant to be, and that’s the most that can be said about most of it.
Except this. I love doing it. Like my cross-stitching, it’s a matter of valuing the action above the results. The action and, in this case, the materials. I love art supplies. Love my box of watercolors, love the little tubes of pigments, love the ranks of sharpened colored pencils in their many shades. I even love the brushes, though most of my affection goes to the things with colors.
The only art-supplies for which I don’t feel a fondness are my charcoals. I don’t like the feel of them in my fingers, and I purely hate the sound and feel of the paper smudgers that give charcoal drawings their realistic shading.
Those are literally worse than fingernails on a blackboard to me. I’ve done charcoal drawings that pleased me, but I don’t enjoy the making of them in the same way I enjoy playing with my paint set. In fact, it’s rather a slog. I did charcoal portrait at a friend’s request last year, and then one for a gift, and then one for another gift, and by the time I’d finished those, I was ready to chuck my charcoal pencils altogether. I kind of wanted to do one more (of my two nieces, for my sister), but I haven’t been able to talk myself into picking up the charcoals again, either to do that or to finish any of the “partials” in my sketchbook. Apparently this is what happens when I value the result above the process. I don’t even want to finish.
So it’s back to the fun stuff, back to the colors. I bought a sort of guided drawing-journal at WalMart a couple years ago, with daily drawing prompts (or they’re meant to be daily, though I tend to sit down and do a handful in a row). That’s just about right because they’re not intended to be Great Art, so there’s not the pressure of the oversized blank page of a sketchbook. I can just start doodling with the paint set. Yesterday’s drawings were a swimsuit (“something you’re looking foward to”) and my laptop (“something you work on a lot”) and a blog-page (“a reflection”—I got tricky with that one).
I’m thinking about taking the watercolors to Hawai’i this month, to go for an illustrated journal like I did once before. That one (from a trip to Maui) has become my all-time favorite travel journal—but the balance seems to be that I need to NOT intimidate myself right out of writing/drawing in it. If I’m fretting about producing some “work of art,” I’ll avoid putting down anything at all. I’ve found a small sketchbook that has removable pages that can be reordered and reinserted, and that’s the best way I can think of to take the pressure off. If I start something and don’t like it, I don’t have to worry about “ruining” the whole book—which means I’ll be much more likely to make the attempts in the first place.
I tend to overthink things—can you tell?? If I just let myself have fun with the process, instead of focusing on results, I’ll probably end up with some sketches I’m fond of. When I fret about results, I give myself the visual-arts version of Writer’s Block!
Kana's Chronicles 
You have talent. Don’t fret over the “work of art” thing. That’s not up to the artist to decide anyway.
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That’s a good reminder. ;)
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Kana,
I envy anyone with artistic talent! I failed ‘stickman’ drawing in school. LOL
Additionally, I am ‘shade-blind’ and while I can see colors, I have no mid-range color vision. For example, I can see Pink – but light pink is white to me and dark pink is red – no midrange. It drives my wife nuts because she’ll ask me to get something from the closet and I’ll pull the wrong garment thinking it’s the correct color. Red, Green, Brown are my worse colors to deal with. Again, I can see the true color, the true intermediate but absolutely no variations.
When I took my then fiancée to our first military ball she was concerned. She knew about my color vision and was concerned when I wore my dress uniform. She was worried that I was wearing the wrong pants! You see the Army Dress-Mess Blue uniform has a very dark blue jacket and a lighter blue pant. She didn’t say anything until we arrived at the Ball and realized the either everyone else was color blind like I was or I was actually in the correct uniform!
My lack of color vision had both a good and a bad side during my military career. On the bad side – I couldn’t fly. I always wanted to be an Army aviator, but I couldn’t pass the color vision test. I did learn to fly as an aerial observer in Vietnam, but I found out exactly why the Army wouldn’t send me to flight school. One evening when we were returning from a visual recon mission along the Cambodian border, I had the controls, and I got us back to the airfield and turned over the plane to the pilot (you could fly an L-19 ‘Bird dog’ from the rear seat but you couldn’t land). He abruptly pulled us up – I had lined us up to land on the canal next to the runway – I couldn’t tell the difference between the wet runway and the canal next to it! Oh Well!
On the other side you can’t camouflage things very well from me. That ‘ability’ almost cost me dearly! You see when you cut a branch (or in our case reeds) for camouflage they begin turning color as they dry out. In my case, especially with green, the minute it isn’t true green anymore it stands out like a sore thumb. So, one afternoon on a routine visual recon mission I spotted something in the bush that didn’t look right. It looked like a large boat covered with reeds. The VC or NVA would infiltrate at night through our area and in the early morning they would find a patch of high ground, turn their boat over, spread mosquito nets over the boat (called a sampan) cover it with camouflage and hide there until dusk and then continue on their way.
My pilot couldn’t see the outline of the sampan, so I had him come around and I dropped a smoke grenade in the vicinity, and he came around and fired a rocket into the area I designated. We hit what must have be a sampan carrying ammunition. We went from about 300′ to nearly 1,000′ on the shock wave – how he kept the plane from falling apart, I’ll never know!
Prior to the Cambodian Incursion I got sent to Saigon to scan aerial photos of the area of operation to spot camouflaged areas. I found a number of them, so my lack of color vision was actually put to some use.
But I still envy those with artistic talent even if I can’t actually see the variances in color and appreciate the subtleness of the blending of colors and hues.
Regards
“Hardcharger” Pete
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holy cow, do you have some stories!
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You can draw far better then I can
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Thank you for sharing some of your art – it is lovely! I unfortunately do not have any talent in that area.
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YOU have talent for someone so “ignorant”
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Well, thank you. It’s figured-out-by-playing-around stuff… ;)
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That’s the best way – play about…
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That’s wonderful. I think you have the right attitude. Art should be about joy and peace and expression
Your watercolor is amazing. It captured the essence so perfectly. And the little piece of lavender, all so lovely 😍
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