Thoughts on Drawing - Jessica Zhang

Taking this drawing class this semester was a fun experience, especially since it is my senior year. The last time I drew so extensively was back in high school when I took art classes, and this class was an interesting flashback to some of the techniques I used back then which included predominantly pencil drawings and still life. While still life is not one of my favorite methods to draw, it is definitely satisfying to replicate a scene on paper with an eye to the small details. It is also nicely meditative in small doses.

Moving on from still life, what I enjoyed the most about drawing was the ability to take different objects in life and insert them into a scene, with no concern of whether or not they would be there in the first place. This was the concentration of the latter part of the semester and it was great because I really got the opportunity to use the techniques learned while still being creative.

That being said, the process can also be frustrating. I do not have the concentration and patience necessary to work on art extensively. I tend to focus a lot on smaller details and the need for variations in "color" and depth. I say "color" here because while all our drawings were in greyscale, I wanted to strive to show that the objects were of different colors and this color changed depending on the distance from the viewer and the lighting. This of course was a struggle and resulted in a decent amount of frustration in which I oscillated between "this is not dark enough" and "this is not light enough", and frequently "why do all these objects look like they have the same color". Definitely a good learning experience, but most of my drawings would end up taking longer than I expected and even when done, the more I would look at them, the more I would see things I could nitpick and change. This brings drawing from a relaxing meditative and creative experience to more of a "I have to fix this formatting in Word because the alignments are off."

I do intend to continue drawing as a hobby, but I don't think I will work on many more rendered pieces. Sketches tend to be more fun and stress-relieving, and I will probably stick to those. (The semester-long sketchbook was great!)