Thoughts on Drawing - Liz

Drawing to me has always been a way to take something out of my head and put it onto paper. I’ve been drawing for as long as I can remember and I can’t imagine there ever being a time in my life where I would be able to stop. 

Drawing is also remembering. Ever since I moved past the legions of headless handless costume designs I made when I was ten, I can remember stuff that was going on in my life by looking at my sketchbooks. Even if I hadn’t drawn something from life or even anything remotely to do with events going on, I can see a picture I drew ten years ago and remember that I really liked some song because of this one time I was hanging out with a friend I haven’t seen in years. Right before I came to Duke, I started to make journal comics to remember things more explicitly and over freshman year, I stopped doing that. 

Since this is the first class in two years that I’ve really had to focus on the basics of drawing and getting back to observational drawing, I’ve been able to realize how much I’ve missed it. In my first two semesters at Duke, I hadn’t stopped drawing, but I’d stopped trying to improve or do anything with it. This class helped remind me that even when it takes hours to do or I still can’t render miles and miles of bricks right that at a fundamental level, I like drawing. It calms me down and it’s one of my favorite kinds of puzzle to solve. Watching how the quality of my product changed with the amount of effort I put into it in this class, I think I appreciate all over again how much I like getting to the end of a project I’ve worked hard on and seeing how I’ve improved.