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The worst criticism we could level at each others’ creative activities as kids? “You copied!”

I’ve carried a dread fear of copying through to adulthood, insisting on creating my own characters and worlds, sneering at derivative works like fan-fiction.

Today I sucked up my pride and copied.

As I’ve written here, I’ve been poring over the Franco-Belgian comic series Spirou et Fantasio, studying the thick-and-thin weight variations in the sweeping inked lines, marvelling at the composition of the panels and the scenes, completely befuddled by the French dialogue boxes but mentally photocopying the spoken and shouted lettering styles.

Lately I’ve been frustrated by certain limitations in my drawing. I’m ready for the next level, and anything that falls short of that is glaringly obvious and annoying to me. Specifically, I’m unhappy at things like my rendering of hands and shoes, which are turning out like vague potatoes and yams at the end of characters’ limbs.

So, finished my copywriting work, I’ve been studying panels of Spirou and looking at hands, feet, clothes, faces.
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Strangely, copying this work is easy, and I think it’s because these shapes have been in my imagination since childhood. I’ve been almost drawing them for decades, so climbing over that last little wall doesn’t take much effort.

There’s a beautiful weight to these artists’ figures. (“Oh, I can do variable line-weights, just not at the size I usually draw because it takes a brush!”) Even when drawn in the goofiest style, there’s an awareness of how cloth folds, how limbs twist. As I worked on this, I found myself thinking, “I like that kind of eye, I don’t like those noses, those fingers are too detailed:” So I know where I want to go, and it’s not exactly these characters. But I’m learning a lot from them!

Good drawing, it turns out, is about good planning. While I’ve long enjoyed being able to sit down and quickly draw anything I think of, the figures always stopped short because something about them never quite ‘read’ properly — limbs stuck out or joined at funny angles. I want to be able to draw characters that fit together properly in the mind.

So after this ‘copying’ exercise, I spent about an hour getting comfortable with applying this principle to my own drawings, and ended up very happy about the results.

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As I walked home from the pub, where I’d spent the whole day working at Table 10, I saw the world broken down into shapes — the slanted rectangles of the lamp-posts, the ovals and circles of the seagulls, and the vanishing-point exercise of the old grey buildings of this town receding off to pointed triangular roof-silhouettes.

Of course, this is exactly how all those books I read as a kid told me to draw, but it was just too frustrating to follow their instructions, which always felt like this:

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Now I’m at a point where I can do this, though, and it’s time to step up to that level of detail. Not doing it feels like trying to use a tent without poles!

My dad shared a great image with me during our conversation last weekend about how important it is to always be learning: In the coal-mines where his father worked, they regularly removed the steel cable that lowered men and supplies down to the coal-face. Why? To measure it. “When the rope stops stretching:” they said. The unspoken part? It breaks and something bad happens.

So here’s to being a stretchy rope.

I wanted to do something, though, and making a stuffed toy didn’t work out at all: First, I started cutting out the pattern, then realised that there was another pattern on the back. Oh, okay, so I should photocopy it? But the pattern paper was bigger than my printer/scanner’s bed by about four times.

Right, so I used my lightbox to trace out the pattern, struggling to ignore the lines coming through from the reverse side. Then I cut out the zillion pieces of fabric… and discovered the many of the shapes were half as wide as they should be. The pattern pieces had a little box with arrows that — I guess — means “This shape times two, mirrored”. Or something. The book had absolutely no explanation for how to use the included patterns.

So I decided to go back to paper. I know paper. A card is pointless, but Craig already bought her a dress.

I don’t know have a clue how to relate to very young kids. I’m looking forward to my friends’ kids and my niece being older. “Oh good, you’re here, we can talk, I can draw stuff for you, we can make up parameters for games, and you can stay with me? Great, let’s play!”

On Friday we went to see another concert at the Lyth Arts Centre, this time a duo of traditional Scottish musicians, Fiona Hunter and Mike Vass:

We’d been out a couple of times during the week, including a trip to Thurso to see The Great Gatsby:

My expectations were very low, because I’d read reviews that wrote the movie off as just an empty spectacle. They certainly had a point, but that judgment is based on begging the question that spectacle is a bad thing. For me, it was like getting to look through a stereoscope picture of 1922 for two-and-a-half hours — which was completely fun. So what if the characters were cardboard cut-outs? They are in the novel, too.

“¦Or so I’ve been told — I’m among the few who didn’t read the book in high school, and I’ve just never got around to it since, mainly because I had an instinct that it was a certain kind of book. Last week I read a beautifully written review that confirmed my suspicions: “Why I Hate The Great Gatsby“. The critic’s points can be fairly levelled at the movie, too — and yet it was wonderful to see someone have the budget and the vision to deliver such a visual treat. The characters were just an excuse to keep showing and watching, and in this case I was okay with that. It’s the first 3D movie I’ve seen that uses the technology throughout the film to an effect that’s not only good but adds to the overall value of the piece (perhaps even lending it value it wouldn’t otherwise have).

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I’ve been driving a lot lately. If we have to go somewhere, I drive. I knew from the beginning that this is how you’re supposed to get comfortable and familiar with the process, but driving jangled my nerves so much that I just couldn’t subject myself to it any more than once or twice a week. But a few weeks back Craig and I switched seats, and now it’s consistently fine and even fun. Regardless of what the examiner will have to say about it, I declare myself a driver. It’s just a matter of time until I get my licence, because the difficult part is over.

My mantra for driving is breathe, notice, enjoy. When I remember those three things, I’m fine.

Now I just wish the car ran on air or water or something other than carbon-emitting, war-provoking dinosaur juice.

As we drove back from the concert Friday night, along Wick’s main street, I was surrounded by the boy racers, who swung around the roundabout, heading back to do another circuit of the town and rev their motors.

I could get it, kind of: This picks up on my point about power in the last post, and a car definitely gives you a feeling of power. But all that gunshot muffler, deafening-growl engine noise”¦ it’s stupid. Thats not really power, and whatever substitute it is, a populated area is not the place to express it.

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I read an article this morning which put this idea into my head: As young creative people we want our talents to be witnessed. As mature creative people we want to use our talents to witness.

That feels right to me.

But there’s something about power in here, too: I don’t seek power, and I’m turned off by people who do. I just want to be present in the moment and witness life in its infinite variety of forms. Yet how much of my shunning power comes from not getting any? Is this sour grapes, or liberation from the values of a material world that’s disconnected from its source? Or both?

I doodled this today as a response to a drawing prompt on Twitter from Off-Life magazine:

It scares me a bit because it’s such a powerful, kinda violent image (reffed* from that classic picture of Muhammed Ali).

*”Reffing” is a handy word I’ve picked up: referring to source material when drawing.

In a Strategic Coach meeting yesterday it struck me that I don’t really have any plans. Probing further, asking why, I got an image/feeling like there’s no hot air for my balloon. No hope.

They say “Hope is for suckers”, but I’m inclined more toward “Hope is for people who aren’t satisfied with the present.” Still, Strategic Coach say “Always make your future bigger than your past”, and that does seem to be the best way to stay engaged and feel some enthusiasm about life.

I don’t know what I want. I do know that I don’t want to shake things up just for the sake of it; there has to be a point.

Here’s something I know: It’s been sunny here for about a fortnight, and it’s a real pleasure just having that going on in the background. It tickles my brain.