Sketchbook

Untitled. Pencil on Paper, 1-23-12

I think this blog is the pressure I needed to produce. Knowing that someone will see what I'm doing, that my art will actually get somewhere past my living room, even if it's not to a lot of eyes, is very exciting and motivating. I had too much caffeine yesterday, and I have today off for being on call all weekend. That combo+motivation to do art = staying up until 4:30 in the morning watching Breaking Bad (really good show!) and drawing. I opened up a sketchbook that has been blank and waiting for.... I don't know, years? I began doing sketches like these in junior high- I would pick faces out of a magazine and just draw them, one by one. I filled a couple of sketchbooks with those. The amazing thing is that you could see the progression of quality just through one sketchbook.

I think it was on   Radiolab that they said that to be really good at something- to be a Clapton or a Mozart or a Picasso or [insert respected artist here] it was less about natural talent and more about just DOING IT over and over- and that to master a skill you had to spend 1000 hours or more on it. That is nearly 42 days. Straight. Just doing that thing. So you better like that thing. And you can't be afraid to suck at that thing for the first 200 hundred hours or so. That's just a reality. We aren't born knowing how to paint or play the guitar. It's just about finding the thing you enjoy and find fulfilling and just doing it while trying to keep your expectations and judgments at bay. Guess Nike had something there.

Since starting this blog, I've already had a couple of interesting conversations with friends about what art means to them and how they perceive their ability to do it. More on this to come!