Last Day of Drawing Class

After eight weeks of Anne's "Drawing so it Looks Real" class I renamed the class "Drawing so that if You Stare at it Long Enough and have had a Couple of Beers You can Kind of Figure Out What it was Supposed to Be." I think I can safely rule out being a long-lost relative of Monet. Or Picasso, even.

After the inevitable fight with my ego and many post-yoga class talks with Anne, I finally got to the point where the actual process of drawing was fun, which was the original point of taking the class. I wasn't a model student (I didn't do my homework) and no matter many tools and tricks Anne presented I never did grasp the concept of proportion (hmmm... maybe I am related to Picasso). But today Anne set up a still life and said "be free."

Proportion be damned! WooHoo!

Guess what? When I have fun drawing I like the end results. I'm not looking for space in a gallery or anything, but when my inner critic starts in with "you left out the shadows" and "what happened to the other end of the pick ax?" I can smile, tell my inner critic to stuff it and look at the pretty pink garlic which was hardly pink at all in real life but I liked the color and, what the heck, it's my drawing.

In a moment of extreme pretentiousness I named it. Therefore, I would like to present "The Freedom of Fall."



Art in America is calling. They have a job for my inner critic.

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• Thoughts on Drawing and Success (thesplinteredmind.blogspot.com)
• My stint in art school (the-stuff-in-between.com)
• Line by Line: Drawing Funny (opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com)