Thoughts on Drawing - Iris Hao

From a young age, I've always had an affinity for drawing or honestly anything related to arts and crafts and creativity. I'm not sure if I like drawing because I'm (decently) good at it or if I'm (decently) good at it because I like it. All my art experience has come from school art classes apart from one summer during elementary school when I took a summer art class taught by our school's art teacher. In middle school, I took either one or two (I can't really remember) art classes. Once I reached high school, I didn't really draw or even have the opportunity to until my senior year when I took an art class as one of my academic classes. In this class, we worked with various medians and forms of media from graphite to watercolor to oil pastel to even printmaking. Attending college has been the same experience for me as high school: I haven't been able to pursue drawing/art until senior year when my schedule is more forgiving.

While I do enjoy working with various medians in art, I would have to say graphite is still my favorite median. To me, graphite is the most versatile and also the most forgiving. I make a lot of mistakes when I draw/need to try multiple times to get things right sometimes. While I do enjoy working with other medians such as oil pastel or acrylic, I am not as experienced with them. Painting is something I've always wanted to enjoy/like more than I actually do. The textures, colors, and visual possibilities of paint always make me excited, and I always create images in my head of a finished piece that I would want to do. However, I almost always can never achieve that finished piece I had in mind. For me, I can never find the right brushstrokes, colors, blending techniques, etc to achieve what I want.

I would be lying if I said I always enjoy drawing. While I do really enjoy art and drawing as a hobby in general, there are many times where I am just not in the mood to be creative and draw. I am best at drawing things from photos. Drawing things from observation with my own eye is much more difficult for me due to scaling and changes in perspective. Thus, I find drawing much less enjoyable if I am drawing things from real time observation. In addition, I am pretty bad at drawing from my head. I find it difficult to draw realistically without having something to look at. It is almost guaranteed that my drawing will be cartoonish if I draw from memory. That brings me to my style of drawing - something that I am not completely content with. Similar to my handwriting, I don't completely love my style of drawing, but I make do with it. In my opinion, my style of drawing is slightly cartoony with thicker, round, less controlled lines, whereas I wish my style consisted of finer, sharper, and clean lines. Lastly, one major factor that affects whether or not I enjoy drawing is the subject of the drawing. If I don't really like the look of the subject of the drawing, I will absolutely abhor drawing. Thus, I would say I'm pretty picky when it comes to choosing content to draw. I'm not sure if being a good artist entails being able to draw anything or if it means being able to adjust and create subject matter until it looks good.

Overall, I really enjoyed taking this class. It was nice to be able to draw one more time before I graduate (and know for sure I won't have much time to pursue art). However, quite unfortunately, there were times where I felt as if an assignment or sketching in our sketchbook was more of a chore than something enjoyable. This has led me to believe that drawing is something that I enjoy doing every now and then when I am mentally in the right mindset. If I'm not in the right mood, drawing can often be frustrating and upsetting!