EXPERIMENTS IN DRAWING

drawing while walking series: "intro/truck" (2009)

drawing while walking series: "that building next to the brewery" (2009)

drawing in the dark series: "right here" (2009)

drawing in the dark series: "the great bellydancer" (2009)

i was walking around at the beach down in the area of the children's festival the other evening. they had been taking tents down all day, as the festival had just ended, and i guess they decided to leave one tent out and open because there was nothing left in it. i looked around for security gaurds and didn't find any, so i went inside the tent and sat down in the dark. for some reason i decided to pull out my sketchbook and start drawing (i say, "for some reason" like i don't know that i had that YACHT song bouncing around in my head. "why would you be drawing in the daaaaark? when you could be drawing in the liiiiight."). i couldn't see. well, to be fair, i could barely see. i could sort of tell where i was putting lines, but not really sure what they looked like all together so i mostly just winged it and let my hand go free. i had this vague idea of what things were going to look like but i couldn't focus so intently on each stroke like i normally do when drawing. it was a very freeing experience. when i came out of the tent, i opened my book and took a look at what i had. above you can find 2 of the 10 drawings that i did in the dark. these ones turned out the best. frankly, i love the style and i'd like to experiement more with this style this summer. it was around that time that i did end up seeing a gaurd slowly cruising around the fenced off area, so i made my way towards the burrard street bridge.

it was then that i came up with my other, almost equally obtuse idea of drawing while walking. this is a very difficult thing to do. you have to constantly look up at what you're drawing, while shooting the eyes down to the page every now and again to make sure things are working out. that, coupled with the fact that the perspective of what you're drawing is constantly changing, makes for a unique drawing experience. above are another 2 drawings that i did from this series.

i highly recommend both styles of drawing. i found that they were both good exercises for "letting go" and feeling what you're drawing more than just trying to make it look right. so if you sketch, i suggest you try either one or both of these styles of drawing when you get a chance. i'll try and post some more at another time.

until later,
-justin