In high school, out of pointless rebellion and boredom, I drew (in pencil) on my desk. Naturally I did this after a particularly amiable, but entirely too smoky, teacher told us not to on the first day of class. At first my doodles were fairly harmless. I usually doodled swords, maybe nebulous shapes or designs, or perhaps even a formless figure yet generally they were just mindless movements of my left hand over paper (left-handed, yes).
One day I drew a half-circle, no. Well, I drew a rectangle on its long side, then I tried to make it look 3-d, then I drew the half-circle into it. I left it there and went to my next class. The next day, however, someone had drawn someone skateboarding on my half-circle-rectangle as if it was a half pipe! I looked at it in awe- someone had added to my graffiti! I started to draw, not doodle this time, but my hand moved with purpose. Gone was my attention to early American history and my smoky teacher- what mattered now was drawing on my desk.
I drew a dragon. Just standing there looking off to the side with its mouth open. Then I added the next critical step- I signed my work: "The Desk Artist." Never before had I ever been so proud of a doodle. I started doing it in every class. Every assigned seat that I had to sit in, I even tried to draw on the gym's stadium seats, and with every drawing I signed: "The Desk Artist."
My dragon was, again, added to by my mysterious friend. This time the dragon was spewing flames into the shield of a knight, who brandished a sword and full plate armor. It was brilliant- until I got caught and severed detention cleaning desks for that teacher. Oh well. I didn't stop me from drawing in other classes with teachers that did not honestly care. I finally met my mysterious accomplice while taking one of those standardized government tests... the I- I-something-or-rather, ITBS test? I can't remember. Either way I finished early, looked over the answers, and realized I had a good 20 minutes left of sitting there- naturally I started to draw on the desk and, of course, signed my work. As we left a fellow student stopped me: "So you're the guy!"
My friend was a much more accomplished artist than I was and was also in the same history class I was in, in the same seat, but in the period after me. This entire experience opened me up to wanting to draw.
So, naturally, I didn't do anything for about 10 years or so. Now here I am- perusing a completely unrelated degree to art of any sort. I found that I really liked comics- loved them. I tried buying comics regularly but that started to get expensive. Then I found online comics- lots of them, some that were several years old. I would go back to the first comic and read it from the beginning. I read about 40 webcomics and the list expands every time I find something new that I like to read. What is this journal about? Doodling, drawing, sketching, storyboarding, whatever- a gallimaufry, a smorgasbord, a plethora of unrelated creativity merely for the sake of doing it.
Right now I am a pretty sub-par artist. You have to roll around and spit up on yourself before you learn how to support your own head, roll over, crawl, sit up, waddle, walk, and then run yeah?
My goal: (amorphous as it is) improve my ability to draw.
- Start out simple: once a week doodle dumps.
- Start only with pencil doodles.
- Develop a personal style.
- Learn how to ink.
- Learn how to color with Photoshop (this is a ways in the future)
- Develop an online comic
Why: I'm doing this for myself, if other people like it rockers, if no one does- I don't care.
Let’s rocks this!
No comments:
Post a Comment