Stephanie Amador's Thought on Drawing

When I first began to draw for class, it was difficult for me to look at a scene’s individual parts. However, with time, I learned that everyone has their own style and it is the creative way in which you carry our your artwork, that constitutes art and drawing. I get lost when I draw; it is my way of entering a world that no one can see until I make a mark on my paper. I can have my own interpretation of the same scene as someone else. I occasionally doodle on my notes during class; sometimes it is unintentional, but lately it has been intentional. I enjoyed having a sketchbook because there were difficult things that we drew in class (landscape) that was more constrained than in my sketchbook, where I could draw anything I wanted.

            I learned that my work was more stylistic. I think this is because I like to have my own interpretation of things, which occurs in my everyday life. I enjoy drawing because I get to replicate something on paper as I SEE it. The most difficult part of drawing for me is the shading aspect. It is hard for me to conceptualize where the shadows are and where the light hits specific objects. Another difficult thing to grasp was that everyone has their own specific style and that my stylistic ways were not wrong, but I had to maintain them throughout my artwork. Bill reassured me of this everyday, and I was happy that he did. At first I thought that because I did not draw like everyone else, I was drawing wrong, but I soon realized with the help of Bill’s encouraging words, that drawing is not wrong it just has to be consistent.

            When researching artists in the Duke library and archive, I came across many paintings by Van Gogh that I felt spoke to my style. Van Gogh was a post-Impressionist painter whose work has a bold color and tone to it as well as a stylistic feel to it. For example, Van Gogh’s painting The Starry Night is very stylistic and has a great dark to light contrast. The landscape and people are very dark, and the drawing is not an exact depiction of the location, but more of his interpretation. I feel like I can relate to this because I tend to have a stark contrast in color since I use dark charcoal in my artwork. I like to have a creative depiction of the location and add my own style to it like Van Gogh. He inspires me to continue my own stylistic artwork.

            Before I took the class, I was not completely sure what to expect. I figured that we would learn a variety of things and concepts (which we did), but I also thought that we would be able to be more creative in our artwork. It was not until the end that we were able to experiment more by drawing in random objects that were not in our landscape drawing. I can understand that we needed somewhat of a drawing basis before we added it our own creativity, but creativity is what I love about drawing. I hope to continue sketching, especially with charcoal. As Bill says, I was not afraid of the charcoal and used it in my own way. Thank you Bill for a great semester and for teaching me! I put a great deal of time and effort into my drawings even if they are stylistic. Thank you for everything, and I look forward to taking another class in visual arts.