Drawing

This Spring Vacation has just flown by for me this year!  I worked 40 hours last week and when I wasn’t working I was exercising, baking, seeing my girlfriends or resting and going to bed early to get the sleep I needed.  But I did get to do something I haven’t been able to sit down and devote hours to in a long time—I got to draw  :)

My friend Katrina commissioned me to draw a picture of her with her boyfriend Tu and I immediately accepted because she’s such a sweet friend  :)  It was definitely a challenging picture to draw for a lot of reasons—not to mention I was a little rusty!  The only drawings I have done since the Fall of 2010 have been quick ballpoint pen sketches.  The last drawing I completed with graphite pencils was one of Mulder and Scully for the heART for Charity project (http://heart.keyofx.org/) last summer.  I began working on this graphite pencil drawing of Kat and Tu last week when Spring Vacation started.  Last night I finished working on Kat’s face and hair and then moved on to Tu’s face.  For some reason he was particularly hard for me to capture.  I had a lot of trouble with his eyes, and for me, if the eyes of a portrait aren’t right, the whole portrait won’t work.  The eyes are the windows to a person’s soul—I always have to get them right!  I was pretty frustrated last night because I just couldn’t get Tu’s expression correct so I ended up putting everything aside, telling myself not to force something that wasn’t coming naturally.  I’d try again in a day or two.  Before I fell asleep that night I prayed to God for Him to help me get the drawing right.

My goal had been to finish the drawing before school started again and I knew I had to devote most of Sunday to all the homework I had due.  However, I opened my WIP folder this morning and stared at the half-completed drawing, studying Tu in the reference photo and then studying my version of him.  And then the inspiration came over me and I knew what I had to do to get his eyes right.  I have learned that when inspiration strikes like that I can’t ignore it—that’s when the magic can happen.  So I pulled out my pencils and began working on the drawing again and didn’t stop for two whole hours.  I fixed Tu’s eyes, put the finishing touches of shading on his face and Kat’s, worked on the background, signed and dated it, and then called it finished  :)  Considering how challenging this drawing was I feel that it came out quite well and I think Kat’ll be happy with it.

I love drawing.  I’ve been doing it since I could hold a pencil.  When I was a little girl, I’d draw only animals, mainly horses, cats, birds and characters from Disney’s The Lion King.  As I got older I began to draw fantasy creatures.  In my freshman year of high school I began to dabble in drawing fairies.  In my sophomore year I finally began drawing realistic people.  My first photorealism portrait was of Galadriel and Frodo from LOTR: The Fellowship of the Ring.  Now, six years later, I can draw pretty much anything and anyone just as long as I have a reference photo to go off of. 

Drawing relaxes me.  It’s a way for me to explore my creative side.  When I draw I turn on some music—usually New Age stuff, like Enya, Loreena McKennitt or Amethystium.  I love all kinds of music but I find this kind of music the best for drawing.  It’s beautiful, it’s soothing and it isn’t distracting.  I’ve tried to draw to classical music before and it just isn’t the same.  I don’t like it as much.  I think I like New Age better because the songs remind me of Irish mythology, folklore, and the other fantasy worlds I tend to escape to when I read.  As I focus in on the details of a portrait, I let my mind drift on the various celtic-flavored, mystical melodies of the songs, allowing my thoughts to fly along with the soaring and dipping sopranos of the women singing.  Time passes me by when I’m listening to these beautiful songs and drawing.  Now, if only time would fly by just as quickly when I’m at school or work…  ;)

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