Drawing seems to be more about suppression than invention.
I’ve always been terrible at it, but today I tried to make a realistic face drawing and it came out kinda okay. My friend told me not to draw objects, but to draw shadow starting darkest to lightest.
It was a breakthrough. For the first time, I get drawing. I understand it. It’s not about fine motor skills or amazing imagination. It’s about shutting down the left brain. It’s an exercise in smothering the object oriented completionist in me and drawing only what shades (not objects!) I actually see without trying to make them into something.
The representation emerges from the negative space. It’s a weird breakdown of the way my brain processes the world. It’s hard to suppress the connection making logic that interprets interplay of light as a world of things. It’s like shutting down intelligence and becoming nothing but a lens that doesn’t distinguish what it sees.
Still, it’s ridiculously easy compared to the mystical idea I had of drawing. I’m excited to try some more!