Thoughts On Drawing

Drawing is the oxygen I need to keep on. I'm not trying to sound dramatic. I started drawing when I was 5. It was hard to separate me from the pencil and the wall ever since. My mother enrolled me in my first drawing class and since then I've gone on drawing for so long that I literally don't know life without it.. except well, last year.

My freshman year at Duke was crippling. In a struggle to quickly adapt to the new environment and make new friends, I lost sight of the one thing that I was most passionate for. Drawing keeps me grounded, it keeps me focused, it relaxes me. I tried hard to study for my classes, I went out on the weekends, and I spent the rest of my free time with my friends. Despite all this, I wasn't happy. I felt lost that entire year. I came home that summer after the first year of "the best four years of my life" and cried. It wasn't that I didn't love Duke. I made friends that were absolute keepers - you know, the type of people you know are going to be at your wedding. But I was just so stressed and so tired. My self-esteem was at an all time low. I hadn't been performing as well as I'd hoped academically, and I struggled with coming to terms with the fact that University was hard and giving my all just wasn't enough. I felt invisible in the crowd, overshadowed, and my belief in my self slowly waned. I really sat myself down and asked myself, what was wrong? Why had I lost myself? Why was I so unhappy?

The answer was simple. I was disconnected from the one thing that I loved endlessly. A fish out of water can only survive for so long. I was so overwhelmed that I forgot how to breathe. I needed to breathe. People have different outlets to get away from the reality they sometimes feel suffocated in - whether that be dance, music, sports, or another activity. Drawing is my escape. The moment the headphones are in and the pencil is in hand, nothing but the creation in front of my eyes matters. Not a single care in the world. It's magical. Without art in my life, I lost sight of my identity. I also lost confidence in myself, considering drawing was the very thing that gave me something to be proud of myself for. The fire in me had burned out. I promised myself that I would refuel my passion, relight the flame, and that I would never make the same mistake I did again. I can't be without art. I can't give up the one thing that keeps me sane.

I made a conscious decision to get involved in Duke arts, and so far, it's been one hell of a semester. In a good way. No matter how stressed I am, how hectic my schedule is, how hard my classes are -- I'm happier. Much happier. I know that the grades I get don't define my value as a person, heck, not even my artworks define me, but it sure is a lot better to know that I'm doing what I love. Taking a drawing class this semester has affirmed my decision to continue with Duke arts. It's the perfect balance to "get away"from the stress of my other classes. I will definitely work hard to achieve a Visual Arts minor.

Connection with the Past

I began drawing in fifth grade after I was enrolled into an art class in my neighborhood. I was taught to draw from photos, or sometimes other drawings. My teacher was of the belief that after drawing something enough times I would be able to instinctively do it myself. It was true to a certain extent. I learned shading, and how to visualize objects from 3-D to paper. However, I didn't know how to simplify objects, or emphasize others. I began to get tired of drawing and copying art, and decided to start up painting.

I painted from eighth to twelfth grade, starting with acrylic and then graduating to oil. The biggest difference between painting and drawing is the different ways the artist visualizes their subject. Drawing is about lines and shades, while painting is about blocks of color. However, I didn't even realize this until I found myself working on one of the landscape assignments. The way I tackle drawing something now is fundamentally different from how I used to before I started painting. A pencil to me is now something that creates blocks of color (shades). I don't think of images as lines anymore, and this is reflected in my drawings.

Drawing 199 was a flashback to my previous experiences in drawing. It is reminiscent of my teacher and the ways she taught me art. However, at the same time I have realized how much I have grown and how my perception of images have changed. I greatly enjoyed the class, especially when we given the freedom to decide the content of our drawings. I would highly recommend this class to anyone interested in art.

Thoughts on Drawing

My earliest memories of drawing date back to when I was a child and my almost infant brother and I would have “drawing contests”. In my family the love for drawing was deeply rooted in my mother and fathers and thus it spread on to us. When it came to natural talent, my brother stole all the glory as he could pick up a pencil and draw anything almost life-like in a minute. Although I was more methodical and hesitant with my drawings, I always enjoyed it very much and it was one of my favorite hobbies. Unfortunately, when the schoolwork and other activities picked up, there was no more time for drawing. Since entering high school I had been dying to take an art class again and this semester was my first opportunity to do so.

This drawing class truly opened my eyes to all the beauty and work behind drawing. Although my parents had always tried to teach us about lines, shading, and space I never processed it as well as I did during this class. It is incredible to see how each line and each mark on the page comes together to define and give a feeling to the piece, sometimes even an unintentional one. It was a great learning experience to go back to the basics and progress forward throughout the semester. As I look at my portfolio, I can truly see a progression in my style and use of different techniques. I know that during some of the last drawings I used the techniques without even thinking about it, almost like it had become natural. During all our drawings I truly felt like I was immersed in the process, and like we said during some of our critique sessions, I felt certain emotions during each of them.

Even after this drawing class ends, I do not plan to stop drawing. Amongst my science and math classes, drawing is the perfect change of pace that I want and need.  After all the time and effort I’ve put into it this semester, it would be a waste to stop and lose all the technique I have developed. Thankfully, this semester left me with many supplies and if I do not get to continue taking art courses, at least I have the materials to immerse myself in a drawing at home. Perhaps, I may look into drawing with more color, but I also love the feeling that charcoal gives. The opportunity to take this drawing class in college was a great one and it truly has been one of my favorite classes. I cannot wait to return home and hopefully have a drawing contest with my brother once more, where my technique and practice with trump over some of his natural talent.

Thank you!

Semester Reflections

After stepping into our first day of drawing in this class, I was mortified. I was late, struggling to keep a hold of my board and my drawing pad and my supplies, and everyone else was already huddled over their boards, scribbling away. I looked sheepishly at the professor, who told me to go ahead and sit down and just start drawing. As I looked for a seat, I dared to peek at what one of the other students had done so far. Bad idea; they actually knew how to draw, and as I made my way to an empty seat I could feel my face flushing. Wasn’t this an introductory drawing class? Didn’t I ask that before I signed up? Am I in the right place? Good Lord, what have I done? All of these thoughts were flew through my head at lightning speed as I fumbled with my board, trying to figure out how to orient it correctly without making a bigger fool out of myself. Once I got it upright, with the paper and the pencils out and in a good position to start, I just sat there for a good while, alternatively staring at either the mishmash of stools and mannequin parts in the middle of the room (that we were supposed to be drawing) or at the blank paper in front of me. I’m a computer science major, the last time I took an art class was in elementary school, and I’m just supposed to sit down and start drawing? Like everyone else had somehow managed to do? After sixteen years of schooling, that was the most unprepared I have ever felt in an academic environment.

Obviously, looking back on that day now, it was nowhere near as terrifying as it was in my head, and I’m 99% sure no one else noticed my extreme embarrassment. After about fifteen minutes of just sitting there, I did end up sketching something resembling the arrangement of items in the middle of the room. I was even proud of myself for a week or two there, as we worked on our line-drawings. The idea of different line weights unsettled me a bit, but I was still following the lessons and feeling confident. When we started shading, however, I was thrown off entirely; while putting together my portfolio, I noticed my “shading” drawing from that lesson, and I cringed. I legitimately did not understand how to make the shading on the items translate into something I could represent on paper with just graphite or charcoal. I really liked the negative space drawing because there was no shading, and even though we only had a week with that, I enjoyed that lesson very much. Even though I still had no idea how to shade, negative space drawing reminded me that I wasn’t bad at drawing, per se, but still just learning.

Things started to make sense again with the idea of subtractive drawing, and I started to get the hang of using an eraser to take away value (rather than trying to add it all on with the right weight at one time). I could only figure out how to do this with charcoal, so that became my medium of choice. One of my favorite pieces I did this semester was our first perspective piece, which I did in charcoal with an ungodly amount of erasing. By the time I had completed that drawing, my fingers were blistered from erasing so much and my putty eraser had turned from light gray to black. That was the first time I was legitimately proud of what I had done; the drawing took me a good week and a half to complete, but it actually felt like a completed drawing, and I could literally see the improvement from my first couple of drawings. The next assignment, the photo-insertion piece, was my first foray back into graphite after working almost exclusively with charcoal for a month or so, and I struggled to get the same range of values. I surprised myself, and I was again quite proud of my piece.

Our final drawing (which I’m still tweaking as I write this) was our fictional narrative piece; I chose to do an imagination of Doctor Who, a popular British science fiction show, as the subject, but because I was so emotionally invested in the content, I was quite unhappy with most of the ideas I initially came up with. This was the first drawing where I expected it to be good, rather than just hoping, which actually led to some frustration on my part. I eventually settled on the idea of the Doctor surrounded by Weeping Angels, which in essence are statues that come to life when no one is looking; this idea made sense to me given Duke’s gothic architecture and prevalence of gargoyles and statues around campus. As I drew, I fell in love with this idea, and I think I became so focused on the narrative that I lost a little bit of focus on the rest of the drawing. Professor Fick pointed this out in class, and in another first, I was actually sad that he didn’t like it as much as I did. Somehow, over the course of a semester, I went from being terrified of picking up a pencil to instead being so emotionally invested in one of my drawings that I was offended when someone else didn’t like it. Through this class, I improved my ability to draw as well as my confidence in my drawings, and the latter is as impressive to me as the former.

I’ve enjoyed this class immensely; it’s made me incredibly proud, frustrated and panicked (at different times, for the most part), and it has also taught me patience and perseverance in a field that I thought I had no business being in. I am very thankful for this experience.

- Jenni Mercado

Thoughts on Drawing

As I sit here thinking about drawing, I am honestly blown away. It can be so simple yet so complicated; it can be the perfect activity for a three year old or an eighty year old. When I was little I always looked up to my mom and grandmother’s artistic abilities. My grandma paints porcelain miniatures with delicate one-hair paintbrushes and my mom was a designer. Even though she helped design the old Canada Dry can or multiple Express stores, her bubble letters always impressed me (that’s probably the main reason I used to practice drawing).  After years of doodling my bubble letters still aren’t as good, but I am constantly reassured that in 20 years maybe they will be. A large part of me is very impatient about drawing, but over time I have learned that time is the best thing you can put into a piece of art.

In 6^th, 7^th, and 8^th grade my school required us to take two of the follow: visual arts, dance, theater, and music. I kept an open mind and tried all four at some point. When it came to high school, one of our graduation requirements was to complete 2 years of one of the 4 arts. My freshman year I took drawing and have taken visual arts ever since. I tried ceramics and painting in the following years, but drawing always seemed like home base. The class really enforced the basics. I learned how to draw from observation and the importance of shading and values. We were taught to keep working on our drawings even after we thought we were finished. Although very often I was frustrated with my work, I was always happy with the final project. Art was a forced break in my day that I always found was necessary. This class and my past inspired me to take this drawing class at Duke. With my premed classes art seemed to be the perfect way to break up my schedule and slowly get to be as good as my mom and grandma. I really enjoyed this class. The first half of the semester was really nice to reinforce the basics. Learning the significance of the line, the eraser, and the values. Somehow a drawing can come to life using only one color. Although the charcoal sometimes gave the drawing an unanticipated feeling, the final piece it always better than I thought. Although jumping into the landscapes was frightening, it was a great learning experience. I am truly proud to see how far my work has come from the beginning.

-Becca Fisher

Thoughts on Drawing -Judy

My first time taking art classes dates back to elementary school, and my teacher was (and still is) a faithful believer in free will. Every Sunday we used to go to his house and casually set around chairs and easels, carrying different art tools from his porch and waiting for that call, “Go pick what you like and start your work today”.

I was always going for the tubes and brushes. For me colors added to the excitement of the creation of something unknown. I tried painting on woodblocks, canvases, paper and even ceramic tile.

“Tell me when you want to try something new,” some days he would whip a bunch of pencils with different labels from one of his huge boxes and put them down in front of me, “maybe.” I kept smiling back at him and heard the voice inside me saying “well no thanks”, just because as a lazy little kid I had watched people drawing still life and the shading just seemed to be taking forever. For similar reasons I almost only took out pencils and erasers when he brought the sculptures out of his study: to me they looked serious, but cool.

I kept building my fantasies about life in the palette-dominated Neverland until it vanished at the beginning of this semester. I had to step out of my circle to learn to deal with only black, white and various shades of gray. As time wore on I became more comfortable working with those colors and gained more thoughts on drawing.

I gradually became one of those people who would sit with a drawing pad and pencils for several hours without even standing up, and I came to know where this captivating power is coming from. While painting uses the juxtaposition of different colors to describe the shapes of individual objects and the relationship in between them, drawing, uses lines as the major means of expression and shows light and shadow through the differentiated values given to the objects. One particular technique I developed through the drawing class this semester is the use of charcoal and eraser; I have learned to darken the site, use the erasers to bring out the sense of light and go back to add more details. Over time I picked up the tolerance for the charcoal powder smeared on my elbow, arm, wrist and fingers from time to time.Sometimes going back and making changes to the drawings can be a challenge to my patience. Drawing, as all kinds of arts, requires great dedication, yet with something that speaks to your heart it is not so easy to get tired.

Although I spend a lot of time with black and white, I never quit using colors when I am out of class, and I now understand the interrelationship between drawing and painting. Drawing is not only a vital step in the creation of a successful piece of work with paints, but it also stands out as a unique art form itself. On one hand, for paintings, drawings exist as the preview in some sense in that they provide information about the composition and the relationship between light and shades. On the other hand, in a pure drawing the lines, despite their differences in directions and textures, reach a unification to capture the momentum and dynamic of the scene and achieve a consistency as a whole.

Practice does not necessarily make perfect, but skills do build up during the process and could be applied to other aspects.

These days when I was working on a mini-portfolio of watercolor I found myself working at a much faster pace when doing the line sketch. The lines give me a more concrete idea about the positions and relative sizes of the objects; I gain certain confidence from the drawings before I start laying the paints on, because I know where I am going from there. 

If I could travel back in time to eight years ago I would probably still choose to fill my work with colors, but if my teacher offered again… I should be mostly prepared to grab those pencils and start the lines :)

Happy December,

Judy

Thoughts On Drawing

When applying to college, the only thing I was certain about was that I would be going to a school with a good art program.  I like and was good at other subjects, but my interests varied so drastically within each field that there was no guarantee I would always enjoy them.  Both my parents are doctors, but science was always the most painstaking of subjects for me.  I would always rush to get through with my Chemistry and Physics homework so I could dedicate the rest of my night to my AP Art assignments.
Up until my Junior Year, I was positive that I would be attending an arts school.  The summer after my Sophomore Year, I took drawing and design at Parson's The New School in Manhattan, NY.  They were college courses taught by the professors from the school.  That summer, I lived in the dorms, explored the city, but, most of all, worked on completing a portfolio.  It was the true art school experience, staying up all night to complete a piece due the very day after it was assigned.  While in high school I dreaded the all-nighters, I embraced them at Parson's.  However, when the summer ended, reality set in.  It was Junior Year and time to start seriously considering my options for college.  While I loved the atmosphere and lifestyle of being at an art school, I knew that my interests didn't begin and end with art.  I am passionate about English, French, History, and writing as well as fine arts, design, and fashion.  My future slid from one end of the spectrum to the other when I decided that a university education was the best place to explore all my loves.
Both my parents attended Duke, and that originally deterred my exploration of that possibility.  I didn't want to be living in my parent's past, I wanted to create my own future.  However, the more I considered it, Duke became the forerunner for school, not for the maths and sciences it is so known for, but for its art program.  I am not a conventional artist, and Duke is not a conventional art school.  In a drawing by a Duke student, one does not just see an artist but a mathematician, physician, writer, or historian.  Everything I learn outside of drawing class, I can see myself applying to a future piece, whether in image or concept.  There is no art quite like Duke art.