It has been a while since I did a drawing just for my own pleasure.
Since I started a new job in September I spend most of my days drawing, and I couldn’t be happier about it! However, as my creative work has become intertwined with my job the goal has inevitably shifted from pleasure to efficiency. I find myself thinking “what would the fastest way” to draw something, rather than my ‘favourite’ way (which is usually also the most elaborate). Drawing has become a mean to an end. I’ve also started drawing digitally because it makes things easier to edit, but sometime I really the meditative quality of drawing on paper, where every mark is there to stay. There is no undo button. Especially as I find myself wishfully tapping on the page whenever I make a mistake!
When I made the transition, I promised myself I would slow down on freelance work. Save my free time for personal projects. But to be honest, after 8 hours at work, it’s difficult to find projects that excite me enough to use my the desk at home.
One of the few exceptions is observational drawing, which I picked up back in the Summer, when I was spending a few weeks in upstate NY. It reminded how much I used to love sketching from life, without the pressure of ‘communicating something’ or being ‘creative’. It forces you to slow down and pay attention to the tiniest details (like the marks made by insects on a leaf).
Around the same time I was also reading How To Do Nothing by Jenny Odell, one of the most inspiring books of the year (seriously, go and get yourself a copy). Odell talks a lot about birdwatching and ‘Bioregionalism’ as a form of resistance in our attention-driven economy. Focusing on the here and now as a space of “critical refusal”. It immediately struck me how observational drawing could serve a very similar function.
So I decided to do more of it. Over the past few weeks (as away to avoid the news mayhem) I slowly inked this composite drawing, based on my Summer observations around a creek in Woodstock, NY (with the Bartleby’s quote as subtle homage to Doing Nothing). I added a bit of digital color but otherwise it was good old fashioned pen on paper, it was one of the most satisfying drawings I made in a long time.
I hope to find the time for more of these, and if I’m happy with the results I may even post some here. Stay tuned and take some time ‘do nothing’, in your own way.
