Thoughts on Drawing -- Sammi Siegel

For as long as I can remember, I have loved practicing art. My parents have kept over 18 years-worth of paintings, doodles, sculptures, collages, and so much more.  But in college, I found myself having less and less time for my hobbies -- and unfortunately, art was one of the first activities to go.  I can only remember a few days over the past four years during which I carved out the time to sit in the gardens, or the Perkins café, or anywhere on campus to just draw.  So this semester, I was really excited to take drawing as a class, and to have a consistent reason and motivation to practice art.

Drawing during our class period was really relaxing for me, and I enjoyed learning technical artistic skills again.  But because I’ve been doing art so casually for the past few years, I wasn’t used to working on such large paper. I tend to doodle (too much) in class, so most of my drawings have only been large enough to fill the margins of my notebooks.  Adapting my drawing style in order to fill up a larger space was an unexpected challenge, but I know it has helped me grow as an artist.

Similarly, I really love drawing objects with a lot of little detail -- so the initial still life assignments were some of the most fun for me.  I would frequently include objects like shoes, purses, and animal sculptures in my drawings because they allowed me to work with smaller details in the foreground.  For this reason, I also found the landscape drawings to be surprisingly difficult. I have much less experience drawings things in the background of an image -- trees and shrubbery were a particularly frustrating challenge at first.  But through the course assignments, I learned how to integrate items with more precise details into larger landscapes (such as the owl in my fiction drawing).  In addition, I found it increasingly helpful to initially practice drawing elements of the landscape in my sketchbook. This is definitely a practice I hope to continue when I draw after college.

Taking this class, and forcing myself to draw every week, helped me realized how much I missed art.  So, I’m planning on making drawing a priority during my free time after I graduate (in just a few weeks!) -- whether it be doodles in my sketchbook, or larger landscapes in my new city.  I’m hoping to continue taking art classes, perhaps expanding into painting or ceramics. Thank you for an amazing class, and for providing me with a creative outlet for the entire semester!