SKETCH

My high school, in order to promote a genuine love for learning and allow students to further explore their interests, sets up a week every school year in which students can enroll in not-so-typical classes. Ranging from international trips in Nicaragua to help build schools or a trip to the borders of Italy or on-campus courses to build your own computer, do community service activities, compose your own music, etc, during this one week, students can just truly explore their passions. This year I was enrolled in an expressive figure drawing class. Essentially for a week, my class and I (which ranged from freshmen to seniors) had models come in and we would sketch them. 

All of these drawings were done in under twenty minutes. For some poses, the models gave us one minute and for the more detailed drawings, we got twenty minutes. Being given a short amount of time helped me learn how to absorb more information at a faster rate and taught me to look at the bigger picture instead of fret over a small detail. I learned the importance of being able to capture the essence of the models' movements. I also felt the importance of hand-eye coordination? Some of you may be thinking, "Eh, whaaaaaat?! This isn't sports we're talking about. This is art?" But the truth is that when figure drawing with live models it's so important to draw what you are seeing, not what you imagine to be seeing. The beauty in art comes from the genuineness of the artwork, not its "perfectness". 

It was extremely mentally tiring at times and sometimes miserably frustrating (ex: drawing hands and feet are an enormous struggle), but also very liberating and relaxing. In our daily life, we are so pushed to be perfect or as close to it as possible. We want to get all the right answers, notice all the right details, analyze texts in one certain way, and overall, we are all so consumed by the idea of getting everything in our lives right. Art however is the polar opposite. It's totally up to interpretation and getting your drawing to be "perfect" is not something you have to worry about. 

As you will probably notice in my sketches I posted, some of them look barely human and yet more like a couple of lines. But that's the precise point. Yes, it's nice to draw the perfect model of what a human looks like, but it's also equally nice to interpret what you see in seemingly random and sporadic ways. Art has always been very gratifying for me because it's just so free. Living in such a restrained and conscious surrounding, a week of pure relaxation was exactly what I needed.