thoughts on drawing

        Art has been part of my life since I was a young child. It has always been a creative outlet for me. On days when I was overwhelmed with stress or rigidity of school I would relax by picking up a pencil and just doodling. Slowly those doodles became sketches and sketches became final pieces.
        I haven't been drawing much since I been to Duke, and I really missed it which is why I decided to take this drawing class. I felt that I needed to do something else besides just studying natural science classes everyday. Although there are days when drawing homework feels like a burden, but on most days being able to engage myself completely in drawing feel as if I'm out of the Duke bubble. I really wish I had more time for each of the projects in this art class because I have so many ideas and I'm a perfectionist with details, in addition I hate being rushed because then I feel like my passion for drawing has been destroyed completely. It is a very time consuming class but I have to say that it helped me to reconnect to art again.
       I feel like drawing in general should be something expressive and not copied. By that I mean, I don't feel the emotions or the intentions of the artist in the drawing if the drawing is simply a pretty portrait of a person or nice replication of a scenery. With simple replication of scenes or people, there might be great artistic skills shown but I don't feel like there is too much room for creativity. Since I believe that the best art is interpretive art, my favorite style of art is surrealism. I think it captures the interest of the audience while inspiring a different story with every different viewer. It's able to combine excellent artistic skill with the touch of ambiguity for imagination. In addition to the importance of the selection of subject matter for artworks, I believe that the media is also very important. How expressive a drawing can be is partially determined by how flexible the media is. I started out working in pencil, but I have developed a liking for charcoal and acrylic. I really like charcoal because the contrast is so strong and the effect of the drawing is so intense. Same with acrylic, there is just so much you can do with it.
       I have had a wonderful time in this drawing class, although, I just wish that we had a little more room for expression earlier on in the class.