Something amazing has happened to me since I've been in Paris. At least, it is amazing to me. For as long as I can remember I have always felt a great deal of frustration surrounding my drawings, and specifically my perpetually failed (I felt) sketchbooks. There would be, from time to time, some painstakingly done drawing that I would feel good about. But they were extremely rare, and usually of something incredibly boring, like a shoe. The kind of thing we all had to do for freshman year 2D drawing classes.
I never felt like my drawings were what I wanted them to be. I was always so intimidated by the question of "what to draw?" and by the vast white space of the page. I've always been really slow when it comes to drawing, and I get hung up on the pointless details. They are (were, maybe??) my perpetual sandtraps, my roadblocks, my kryptonite. I wanted my drawings to have soul, energy, and personality - like Aaron's drawings, or Bethany's.
But since I came to Paris, something has shifted. I am sketching more, and more inclined to sketch than photograph (which is really a total flip), and I actually really like the results. Sometimes the sketches come about frantically - particularly when I'm trying to sketch the woman on the train seated across from me before she notices.
What is more, my sketchbook on the whole has become something more akin to what I have dreamed it would be: A book where the pages are filled with mixes of drawings and text, where the text is winding around and in between the drawings and doodles.
To a degree I've fallen in love with my sketchbook. I don't think I've ever felt this way before... . I don't know what precipitated this change. Maybe it was the book Bethany gave me for my birthday with samples of the sketchbooks of many famous contemporary artists. Maybe it was the mechanical pencil she let me pencil-nap which has become my good friend (never leave home with out it!).
I don't know where these sketches have even come from. But it's something that makes me so happy I can't begin to explain. It is something I am so immensely proud of, though I know that to someone else there may be nothing particularly spectacular about the sketches.
So I want to share them. Here is a selection of some of the drawings I have done since I have been in Paris.
In Italy, near the Duomo in Viterbo.The quote that was on the crypt read: "What you are now, we used to be. What we are now, you will be."
Recent self-portrait - waiting in the metro station for my train to come after class last week.
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