I self-censor myself out of fun a lot. So when I decided to start carrying around a drawing book – and using it – I had to fight my deadly impostor syndrome that insisted that I was being super pretentious. I also had to get used to people seeing what I was doing and being curious, which is maybe even worse. But – I did. And actually letting people see in my book helped me be a lot less precious about what I put in it, too, though I would have expected the opposite. Somehow letting people flip through it made me care (a little) LESS that they might judge what is in there.
So this whole gallery of drawings is from my drawing book, which means there are a lot of drawings I would consider crappy – so what. Drawing books – and I usually have a few going at any given time – are where I painfully force myself to learn how to do better. And there isn’t any room for improvement if you only do what you know how to do, so I feel like I have to embrace the suck. A friend recently convinced me that anyone interested in my drawing book would want to see the bad ones, too, so a lot of the finished (bad) ones are included. The first drawing is oooold – based on the content, I’d guess 2003ish. But most of the rest were done in 2015-2016, when I found this mostly-empty book and started carrying it around with me. There isn’t any unifying theme, but it’s probably obvious that I spent most of this year trying to learn how to get better portrait likenesses, and how to shade with pen & ink (with sometimes dubious results). I still have a lot of work to do on both goals, but I feel good about the progress.
As an aside, I really had no idea how frequently I draw my own feet until I went backwards through this book. It’s a little embarrassing. But then again, they are almost always available when I feel like drawing. And in my defense, I did break my foot in November of 2015 and then spend a whole bunch of time on my back staring at it wish it didn’t hurt. ALSO, while I’m making up lame excuses – in case you’re wondering if I’m bad at photography or color-correction – most of the pages that look dirty are actually dirty. I’m messy on my best day, and I do a lot of drawing outside and while eating. C’est la vie!
Check them out: http://www.nakedtyro.com/galleries/drawings/