Additional Reading / Chapter Five
Turning a weakness into a strength
Obsessive Compulsive Drawing
I’m worried about using this title. I don’t want to minimize a difficult disorder like OCD with an attempt at being clever. However, I’ve been writing my memoir lately, and when I look back it’s difficult not to see a few hard truths – that I was always a bit obsessive, and a little compulsive. When I was young I think it was more than a little, and that was nearly my undoing. However, it was a double edged sword. While some obsessive compulsions made life difficult, one compulsion filled my life with joy – mostly. The desire to draw! Its keen edge kept the negative issues at bay, and still does.
These are most of my sketchbooks from the last year, it was a good year for sketching!
Of course, do a lot of drawing is advice most any art teacher will give you. To get good at drawing, you should draw as much as possible. And I planned to say just that. But then I got to thinking. It’s easy for me to say that. I could easily spend every moment of every day drawing, I practically do. But I’m not sure this is normal (I know normal is not a good word, but you know what I mean) and I’ve noticed finding motivation to draw is a challenge for many artists. So take what I am about to say with a grain of salt.
carrot or a stick
Some folks are academically inclined and can learn for learning sake. If so, stop reading now and get drawing. But for me, I need a carrot or a stick to motivate me. The use of this idiom has bad connotations, yet I’ve learn from negative reinforcement as much as I’ve learned from positive encouragement.
A new sketchbook. A good excuse to try some painting.
Top 10 reasons to draw
FEAR - This is my greatest motivator. The fear lives deep inside of me and it always has. It keeps me on my toes, I’m constantly worried if I don’t keep moving forward and trying to stay a step ahead, the world will stop revolving around me.
PLAY - This is another great motivator, I have a lot of fun making art and I make sure I think of drawing as play. In the early years of my career I thought of it as work. And it felt, and looked that way. Now it’s just a game, and I can hit reset anytime I want.
CHANGE - I get bored easily. So I need to keep changing to keep myself interested. I’ve made experimenting a part of my process. I am always dreaming up new ways of doing art. It’s also my achilles heel; mixing it up can be confusing, and take longer to perfect or grow.
NEW AND OLD - fresh starts, new beginnings. Something as simple as a new sketchbook will get me going. Likewise nostalgia. This year I went back to using markers and graphite pencils after a thirty year break, and it’s taken me to new and familiar places.
USEFUL - I need my work to have a purpose, to solve a problem, communicate an idea. I give myself practical reasons for everything I draw.
PURPOSEFUL LEARNING - Learning is a good motivation, I am always looking for new reasons to learn. But personal growth is not enough, it needs to lead to or solve something.
DELUSION - I’ve been at this professionally for over twenty five years, if something great was going to come from my art, it would have happened by now. Accepting limitations, taking a hit, and geting back up has kept me in the ring far longer than many.
GREATER PURPOSE - There’s that word again. As a person that is shy and troubled by anxiety, drawing has given me purpose and it’s the way I express what I think, feel, and believe. A way to share with others, and make a difference. Even a simple sketch leads to something more, in fact that’s a drawings purpose.
MAKE MISTAKES - Previously this was just talk, easier said than done, until I got a good glue stick. If you look close at my sketches you might see small pieces of ripped up paper glued over drawings. Reprioritizing my thinking to accept imperfections has made drawing much more user friendly.
CRAPPY SKETCHBOOKS - Most of my sketches are done in handmade sketchbooks, put together from cheap printer paper. A drawing on crappy paper cannot be precious.
images: The top sketchbook is mostly figure and fashion studies, the other sketchbook is environments only.
DRAWING GAMES
Gamification is a useful productivity tool to engage and learn. By approaching work as a game it makes tasks more palatable and involving, which at least anecdotally, leads to better quality and quantity of content.
During winter break I made a game of drawing as many characters and costume sketches as I could. I split a standard sized sheet of inexpensive printer paper in half, and drew each grouping based on a theme. Subjects included genres such as science fiction and fantasy. Physical characteristics such as gender, race, age, body shape, or style of demon horns. An important theme was clothing, fashion choices, and hair styles. These are areas that I often ignore. I also explored a bit of storytelling by drawing different narrative themes, emotions, and movement or body language. And of course I made sure the process was fun.
Ah the suffering, The sweet, sweet suffering.
Purpose and pleasure are fundamental, but pain is too.
Managing and utilizing my negative energy is part of the foundation I’ve built my art practice on. Harnessing negative emotions for the good can be productive and (maybe) healthy. For instance, one of my weaknesses at the moment is drawing children. So that is something I am planning to work on by drawing kids stuff, no more weird drawings. Only cute stuff is my motto for the next year.
If this sounds like too much, it is! I’m extreme. I learn really slow so I need a lot of repetition for it to stick. Most artists could do well with only twenty percent of what I am suggesting. Have fun, and keep drawing!
END OF CHAPTER FIVE / Written and Illustrated by Mike Kerr © 2024
