On Dailiness

I am helpless in the face of a new book about sketching.
Never mind that there's very little that the writers of these books can say that I haven't read elsewhere or learned on my own. And still, I buy books such as Hannah Hinchman's "A Life In Hand," which is now pretty old but pretty wonderful. I also bought Cathy Johnson's new book, which is fun because there are so many other artists' works represented there.

Part of what I love about books like these is that they remind me to carve time for daily drawing. Not that this is an onerous chore, mind you. It's quite the opposite. I really love doing this stuff so much that I want to win the lottery and just draw all day long. But I'm always feeling the tug of paying gigs and school-related work and humans and dogs and cats. You know this, too, right? Time: the Big Gift and the slave driver.

And still, there are islands of sanity to be claimed with pen and paper. With that in mind, I'm making myself a short list of ideas on how to claim time for personal drawing -- particularly observational drawing, the bedrock of illustration -- when I'm feeling crowded. Maybe you have ideas, too?

1) The Daily Grid A sketchbook page can be broken up into six or nine cells at, say, 7 in the morning over breakfast. Each cell can be given over to a drawing that takes maybe 5 minutes to make. At the end of the day, I have a page that tends to look pretty good because the grid saves the design day. Some of my favorite pages in my own books were grids I made on days when I was sure I didn't have time to draw.

2) Permission to Make the Shitty Drawing. In the writing world, Anne Lamott coined the wonderful phrase "shitty first draft." Writers need to give themselves permission to make a really terrible first crack at whatever they're trying to create: poem, essay, play, novel. The craft of writing is 80 percent revision anyway. In drawing, it's a little different. Sometimes the shitty drawing just stays a shitty drawing -- and that's OK because even 10 minutes of thoughtful, intentional drawing, no matter how bad, is good practice.

3) Arrangements are Everywhere. Not on this page, but definitely on a recent sketchbook spread, is a drawing of my kitchen table and three of the chairs around it. How did it turn out? See No. 2 above. The point is that I did it when I thought I had nothing to draw. Yet all around my house, the stuff of adulthood creates arrangements that articulate space and form. They're all worthy of study. What I learned from my tables and chairs is that I can come at them from a different angle, maybe even as soon as later today, and make another interesting drawing that may be less shitty than the first. And that all of this refreshes certain skills.

4) Resist the Illusion of Too Busy. I am plagued by anxieties of all kinds. Really. You don't have the time to hear about them all. One of them, though, is a sense that I'm more time-trapped than I am. When I start thinking, "Oh, do I really have time to stop to draw for half an hour?" the answer is usually, "OF COURSE NOT!" Yesterday when that feeling attacked, I did the uncomfortable thing and forced myself to reject it. What bloomed in its place was the crab page you see above. I like the crab page, and I'm glad I made time for it.

5) Resist the Ideal of the Perfect Drawing Situation. To be honest, my favorite drawing situation involves sitting in one, comfortable spot for an hour or more. But I can draw standing up, or behind the wheel of my car in a parking lot, or in my bed looking at a book for photo reference. If I get out my sketchbook every day, even multiple times a day, the perfect drawing situation will come along more often.