To Be Continued...

I've always enjoyed art; the process behind the finalized piece.  Before this class, I had never taken on Drawing as a skill. I was familiar with photography mostly, filming in some ways and even a little with painting. Still, there is something in drawing that had my attention. It is definitely time consuming but the good kind; the kind that keeps you intrigued until you are able to physically represent your mental image. Drawing allows me to say more than any other art skill; what you see, is what I see.

For that to happen, I had to become good at it, to learn the basic skills. I was used to doodling in notebooks, with no acquired or learned knowledge, as a lot of people do. But, I needed the knowledge, just like that I wasn't going to communicate what I wanted to.  I finally got a drawing book, it taught me a lot on faces, I was fascinated by the human face and the eyes mostly. I did some portraits, they looked better than they would have if I didn't have that knowledge; I knew I needed to learn more. That's how I got into Drawing 101. It felt like a challenge, so I took it.

I learned more than the skills that were taught in class. I learned to see... to see objects in raw materials and then see how every single details plays a role in the general image. Now, I see objects and immediately mentally place them in a paper, as if I were drawing with my mind. More than that I started to shape my style and playing with meaning and storyline. I want my work to go beyond the paper, to poke onto something in the viewer and create a link. I loved making the observer take action in my drawings, in each one of the last three we did, it involved a hand or some connection to it. On my last drawing I decided to play a little bit more with the observer, not to create an alternate world (fiction) but to involve the reality of what happens in the mind, with it I targeted emotions. I realized that this type of game and style is what I enjoyed doing. Therefore, even though every work took a really long time to accomplish, I was completely engaged to my ideas.
Drawing Duke was challenging, the buildings have a lot of small details but it also makes you appreciate the architecture more. It also limited, in some way, the freedom in the drawings, that made it harder to come up with an idea that you were passionate about. In my case, it took me a lot longer to find that idea, still I eventually found one for each project.

I ended up loving drawing. I still have a lot of room for improvement; for mastering the eye. But, I am improving; the more I practice the more natural it will come to me.

Look at this drawing artist: Monica Lee. She see's reality to its smallest detail and then puts it on paper, she does a remarkable job on portraying reality.