I’m discovering that I can do more than I think I can when it comes to drawing. I’d still like to work on my composition (admittedly crap; I’m not being patient enough to do figure it out beforehand), and and I’d like to strengthen my sense of what as a kid I called “shape constancy” — drawing hands as blocks instead of blobs, not having characters change size and shape, that kind of thing.
But I have this diminished notion of what I can do, and I think that’s more about what I can be arsed doing. Lately, though, I’m interested and have the will to take the time and work things out — like this figure-drawing today. It’s fun.
I felt remiss not posting something here yesterday; I did do some drawings, but they were for my client, part of an infographic I put together for them.
I have the opportunity to do some illustration work for someone, but I’m hesitant to take it, because I’m realising that I need to figure out how to charge, how to manage deliverables, how many revisions are okay, how to send the final artwork, and how to work on materials other than my sketchbook. It’s a leaping-off point, and it’s scary. Now is the fear about failure, or about getting stuck doing something other than what I want to be working on now?
Oh yeah, and I already have a full-time gig. I’m not ambitious enough to want to work all the time, ’cause I’m supposed to be having quality time with my darling, and figuring out what life is about and all that, too, right?
P.S. Dogs like to run, too! And are a lot more complicated than I realised. It feels like cheating* to use a visual reference, but this exercise shows why it’s useful: there are so many more joints in a dog’s legs than I knew.
*”You copied!” is a childhood slander I still have an unconscious fear of.