Dear Sarah - 003
Characters from books appear in our sketchbooks...
(Just joining us? These letters chronicle our full year of daily drawings and accompanying correspondence/conversation. Learn more about Sarah Harvey here. More info about me can be found here.)
Dear Sarah - January 3
Your bird drawing yesterday reminded me of an exercise Dad used to do with his drawing students. They had to suggest the thing they were drawing without starting with a hard line around the edges - using volume rather than outline to build up the form. The idea was to create a sense of mass by the accumulation of shading and volume/contour lines (hard to explain in mere words). Then I realized you had captured an airy wirey sculptural bird that we can see through. Very cool.
I'm suffering from sensory overload here in Tokyo. I don't even know where to start describing what we have seen/done so far. We hit the ground running and stop only to collapse into bed. Choosing a single thing to focus on and enough moments of stillness to draw it is proving to be challenging. Before I forget, though, I wanted to tell you I saw Anton performing at Shibuya crossing on New Year's Eve!! (Anton, for those who are reading over our shoulders, is a character from our psychological thriller in progress - a young musician of Japanese descent).
Dear Nikki - January 3
Love the drawing of Anton! He's awfully like the character in our book, although Anton might not wear the hat, which reminds me in a weird way of the Davy Crockett hats my brothers used to wear. I assume this particular hat did not have a raccoon tail. But it's Tokyo, so you never know.
New Year's Day on the wet coast was overcast, but with a lovely low light. I went for a walk and saw things I wish I could draw (or paint) -- dead leaves in a pool of clear water that reflected winter branches and the sky. But how do you draw still water and what you can see through it? I have no idea but I took photos for future reference.
Today's drawing is of a remarkably accurate plastic figure of the Little Prince, one of my childhood favourites. He is standing atop a wooden letter F from an old wooden letterpress (I also have a U and an X, which is fun). This was an exercise in proportion (the letter F is actually 4" tall to the Prince's 3". Ooops!). Tempting as it was to scrap this drawing and try again, I just carried on, trying to capture something of the Prince's seriousness, as well as his playfulness. And his tiny epaulettes. Once I (consciously) let go of the idea of getting it "right", it was fun (but I'm still going to try again). I can already see that I am going to have to be hyper-vigilant about two things: perfectionism and comparison. Neither will help me learn to draw. And neither are at all useful in a friendship or a collaboration.
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