Thursday, March 11, 2010

just for fun?






















I found a penciled sketch of this little bugger when I was fighting against the Mighty Pile Of Sketches who has made a permanent home at the corner of my desk and refuses to leave no matter how many clumps of paper full of hasty drawings and stupid ideas I rip out of its rotting flesh and throw in the trash bin. I have no recollection why I had drawn this, and then it occurred to me that this might be one of those rare pieces done in those silly little moments full of those naive thoughts that I might be able to draw something just for fun. Fun? I know that drawing just for the fun of it is totally lost for me, I can't get it back no matter what. Or maybe if I stopped drawing for at least a decade, lose all my artistic endeavors and never did another commissioned job for anyone. Maybe after that, I could draw something just for the fun. Maybe.

Thinking all this, I loosely threw some inks over the sketch and remembered how drawing was fun when I was ten and I was drawing superheroes and stuff. Now days I love drawing, I enjoy it, I can't come up with many other things I'd rather do professionally, it's basically the one thing I'm any good at. I have nothing else. But somehow it isn't fun anymore. Maybe it's meant to be this way, you have to lose the fun if you're going to do something seriously. Fun is being replaced with hate, frustration, unrelenting self-criticism and aim for perfection. It's hard. Harder than it was when I was ten. And even then I was a little bit frustrated that I couldn't draw the way I saw the images in my head. And I still can't.

Anyway, I like the way the tree branch came out, there's a nice sketchy touch in it, a very rare thing in my usually rigid inking. Maybe I try the same for some serious drawings. But thank you, my little horned friend, you made me remember something I hadn't thought for some time.

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