Taking up my pencil
Monday, November 12th, 2007
“In spite of everything, I shall rise again: I will take up my pencil, which I have forsaken in my great discouragement, and I will go on with my drawing.” (Vincent van Gogh)
And that’s what I’m doing. I’m exaggerating, obviously: I have had times of great discouragement in my life, but the past few months have not been among them. No, I just stopped making art a priority in my life, and consequently left behind this blog as well. A few days ago, I realized that I wasn’t happy with that. So here I am.
The problem, of course, when I stop making art, is that it’s a self-perpetuating thing. The longer I go without it, the more reluctant I am to pick it up again, because the first few sketches after a long time away are always clumsy. The part I forget is how good they feel, despite the awkwardness.
Yesterday I had a craving for color, so I picked up my markers and turned for inspiration to a postcard of a stained glass window from Chartres Cathedral. My rendition doesn’t do it justice, partially because I don’t really have the right colors in my pencil case, and partially because marker on paper cannot even approximate the glow of light and glass. Not in my hands, anyway. (Click on the image to make it larger.)
(I also, incidentally, discovered the secret to achieving flat color with markers, which tend to leave those sketchy overlap lines: multiple layers. Why didn’t I think of that ten years ago?)
