As I head towards my goal of 100 iPad “drawings” (one per day), I realize I rarely if ever listen to myself. I don’t know how many times I have told myself “ …stop adding colour to your iPad drawings… “!
I purposely wrote: “NO COLOUR” on a piece of paper and taped it to my drawing table as a reminder. Naturally I totally ignored the message.
Why’d I write myself that message you may be pondering? If you are a frequent reader of my posts (I know there is at least one of you), then you know that I am in a constant battle with my inner artist. To be more specific, apparently I have two artist identities living inside my tiny little brain.
Those two artists are — the drawing and the painter artist. They tend not to get along and are constantly battling one another for dominance.
The Drawing Artist
My inner drawing artist loves to “just” draw and believes that drawing is the purest form of artistic expression. This identity is: brain-to-hand-to-paper. It is my belief that drawing is the foundation of a good painting.
The Painter Artist
My inner painter artist loves to dazzle the eyes with colour harmonies and juxtapositions, while totally ignoring the foundations of a solid drawing. This week the painter within did his very best to derail one of my images, thus, my inner conflict.
I “frickin” quit!
Yep, a few days ago I totally crashed. I was working on a digital drawing — no wait, it was a painting, no damn it, it was a drawing, no, it was a painting!
About 3 hours into my image I was swearing at the iPad and calling it useless. Okay, it wasn’t the iPad I was yelling at, it was the inner drawer/painter (me).
The image was a mess, I forgot how to paint and completely ignored the drawing. At this point one should walk away and try again the next day — not me! Something deeply ingrained in my personality insisted I “fix it”.
That is exactly what I did. I deleted everything and whipped up a simple, quick and bold drawing, or is it a painting? It was then that I walked away and proceeded to spend the rest of the day wallowing in self-pity, artistic doubt and being cranky with everyone around me.
Message, what message?
The next day after resurfacing from my pity-party I headed back to the drawing tablet and proceeded to create a full colour image. Yep, I completely ignored my message. However, I stuck a sock in the mouth of my inner painter and told him to wait his turn. I did not add colour until after the drawing met my expectations.
It’s been a few days since the crash. The inner artist who draws has emerged victorious, for now. Every painting since has been a full colour rendering — but — only after the drawing is approved by me.
Hmm, wait a minute, who won? Oh well, talk to at least one of you next week.
The header image of this post is below for email readers to view – as usual.
eRitchie Art 
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