Fishies and dinghies...

Dear Sarah -038

Hi Nikki,
February 7, 2025

Busy day today, doing what a friend I saw today calls "running the trap line." Groceries, library, Canadian Tire, etc. My friend is an artist who creates beautiful acrylic paintings, dyes her own fabric, and makes incredible fabric art. She knows I'm doing this project with you and she gave me three drawing books (attached) which all look wonderful. The Quentin Blake one is incredible (and even comes with its own pencils)!

But on to the actual drawing. Instagram coughed up a reel by @iamshaneburke called "how to draw a dinghy." I am a total sucker for a clinker-built dinghy, so I followed along and drew a dinghy. It's slightly off but that's okay. I really enjoyed doing it, and will probably try again to see if I can fix the wonkiness.

But is it really drawing when you copy someone else's work this way? Or is it cheating? I'm going to say it's not cheating, it's learning.

Hi Sarah!
Feb 7, 2025

On the matter of ‘is it cheating,’ I worried about this at first, but no longer. Every time we pick up a pencil, try to create a collage, mix colours, follow along with a tutorial on how to draw a _______ or how to do something in Procreate, we are learning. We are practicing looking and seeing, improving our techniques with various tools, learning the language of drawing and storytelling visually in the same way we did when we traced the letters of the alphabet and took dictation when we were learning to write. Besides, there’s a long tradition of ‘serious art students’ copying the work of the masters - not to create better forgeries but to deconstruct how others have made art in the past.

When we sit down to draw a leaf we pick up in the park (or the fish on our book-case) we bring that learning/practice/the musical scales of visual art to the page. We have to think of ourselves as being in kindergarten and not care! Colour inside the lines - or not, it doesn’t matter. Every minute we spend enjoying creative work has value.

So there.

It was so cool seeing those three books wind up in your lap, all of which I’ve had out of the library at one time or another. Check out Danny Gregory’s YouTube videos and online community - I subscribe to his newsletter and must confess I’m a bit of a fangirl… He does some free online tutorials and they are quite wonderful - he seems to be a genuine and gentle soul.

Remember my ‘supportive space’ attempt with my bookend fish a last week? Here is another attempt at drawing it (and the original artifact for reference). You can see there are LOTS of problems with tonight’s effort, but I don’t hate it. It’s different but it’s own thing, if you know what I mean.

I am a fan of dinghies, though I’ve never tried to draw one. I must say I like yours!

Until tomorrow - draw on!!