This is the last portrait I drew. I drew it in March of last year. So, it has been almost one year since I sat down with a source image and did some serious sketching.
What with exams, depression and pain, I just haven't gotten to doing it again.
So, tonight I take out my old sketchbook, take an Ann Summers brochure, and try to draw. (I tend to use the many girl's faces for practice.*)
Awful. Absolutely bloody awful.
First, I find myself staring from the picture, to my paper, to my pencil (repeat) and wondering how the hell I can get those layers of graphite to create a pattern on the page.
Then, I put pencil to paper, and find that I have completely lost the knack for translating an image in front of me into a motion of the pencil.
The result, a lopsided face with a half dodgy smile and one good eye.
I compare that picture to the one here, and I know - KNOW - that all I need is practice, and it won't take so long this time as it did in the first place.
But, when you first start trying to draw, when you've never believed you can draw and you see yourself progressing from this:
to this:
And then to Holly above, you feel impressed. You feel proud of every drawing you do in which the nose is slightly less skewiff, the eyes a little more real, the hair a little more three-dimensional.
But when you know you can do good things, but you can't quite get it down because your talent needs a good squirt of WD-40, every step forward is just as depressing until you surpass the point at which you stopped.
And so, like with everything else, I'm thinking I might quit, because I'm not strong enough to go through the learning again.
