I can see someone looking at this picture and thinking it's not much. It's very sketchy, it looks like it was made very quickly (it was), and it just looks like a practice drawing. But for me, this picture represents me rediscovering what I love about drawing. And I just think it still looks nice anyway.
I did this picture in my art class where my teacher and I set up some objects she had lying around and had me arrange them in an interesting way. Then she had me draw them. The first time I attempted it, I tried to be very precise, trying to get the shapes exactly as I saw them. But then my teacher told me that she wanted me to sketch this very loosely in a brief amount of time. So I did.
After I sketched it, my teacher suggested adding more details to it to make it more interesting. We erased some parts of it to show where the light hit the parts of it. We added in wavy lines to make it feel like wind was blowing through it; in particular, blowing in and out of the skull. Then we added movement lines on the objects the wind would be hitting to make it seem like the wind was shaking them. And that was when we were done.
After finishing it and realizing how proud I was of it, I realized something. Drawing for the last few weeks had started to feel like a bit of a chore to me lately (an accomplishing chore, but a chore nonetheless). This picture made me realize I enjoy drawing much more when I'm doing it rather loosely, when I'm not trying to be precise, when I'm trying to put energy into it.
Energy is important to me. For me, there is nothing more important than making sure my artwork pops out at the audience. That's mainly because it's what I'm good at conveying. I don't see myself ever doing artwork that is super realistic, so I try to make up for that by giving my drawings power. And I think I'm adapt to doing so because I am a naturally energetic person. I run around a lot, I like to get things done quickly, when I was a kid I would look out the window of my car and look at the blur I was seeing. Energy is my natural thing and it's what I'm good at. And it's when I'm doing that am I enjoying drawing.
So that's how important this simple sketch is to me, and why I started this art blog talking about it.