I have a confession to make: I have a fear of drawing with anything other than a pencil. This does not actually include drawing with charcoal ( which I hate because of it's messy nature and the way it falls apart in my hands), pastels, or painting. What it does include is drawing with pens, markers and ink brushes. Why? Because of ink's permanent nature. It's scary - you put down one bad line, and it's over. Sure, there are "erasing mediums" like various forms of white out, but if they are used wrong they end up making a bigger mess. I ALWAYS use them wrong!
Because of a number of recent developments in my life lately I've started to look at my artwork a little differently. One of the conclusions I've come to is that, while I'm becoming more well versed in understanding what I'm drawing and in my own draftmanship, I'm not really growing as an artist. Growing requires stretching outside one's comfort zone. I haven't really worked on stretching, I've instead painted myself into my own little corner of contentedness.
I saw the chance to start breaking out of this on Memorial Day. On Monday, the Palette & Chisel Academy Of Fine Arts had a day long drawing marathon, with live models from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. They do this regularly throughout the year on Memorial Day, Labor Day, and New Years Day. I decided to stretch my drawing muscles by using Micron Pens instead of a pencil for some of the quick sketches. Here are the results:
This is just the beginning. In the months to come I plan on doing all my gesture drawings in ink. I also plan on introducing color with both marker as well as water color. There are also a couple of other of things I have in mind as I move forward with this. Stay tuned...
