Draw on

Close your eyes, take a deep breath, and imagine that you are really good at drawing! Now sharpen your pencils( HB,2B,3B,4B,5B,6B)! Make sure your rubber is clean and you have some paper taped down so it does not move about while you are trying to draw on it! If you are drawing from life it is much easier to draw if the paper is on a tilted board, easel or wall rather than flat on a table. If you are working on a wall it feels nicer if you put a couple of layers of paper on top of each other, unless you are going for the look you get when you draw over a hard or slightly rough surface.

Draw outwardly

Hands are one of the hardest things to draw, I think, so why not practice by drawing your other hand. Years ago Kathy Prendergast did an amazing hand drawing that was like a map, it was huge, and blue. I love the way our hands look like maps. Feet can be good to draw too. When I was in collage in Crawford in Cork I did a series of drawings of my face drawing by touch.  Some of them I built up layers of card, paper, material and netting they all had a map like quality and felt like landscapes almost. So no excuses we always have something we can draw! We are surrounded by things we can draw. After a while you may find it boring just to draw for the sake of drawing and need to draw  whatever you are really interested in, confused by, obsessed by! It could be folds of material or it could be space travel ! It might be very illusive but every so often you get a glimpse of it’s tail and it leads you somewhere interesting and you want to keep following it!

Draw inwardly

It can also be really interesting to start to draw but not allow ourselves to draw anything recognisable, just to kind of doodle and keep going with it to see how it develops. Make marks and experiment with what you can do, and have fun!( I remember we all did this for weeks maybe months in college, and our own personal work developed out of it; over time our real interests were revealed.) Draw with your eyes closed, draw with the hand you don’t usually draw with, draw really quickly, draw really slowly, see how inventive you can be. Tune into how you feel and see how your line and instinctive marks change as your moods do. I like to draw as if the pencil or whatever I am drawing or painting with is an extension of me. Bold as I am bold, subtle as I am subtle. Sometimes I let the pencil lead the way as if it has a complete mind of it’s own; I guess this is when my subconscious mind taking over!

A word of advice, don’t throw away anything. It is great to look back over drawings, they often look different after a little hibernation! Not everything is meant to be a ‘finished’ piece some pieces are just stepping stones, but just as worth while as the ‘finished’ ones. One day they might look even better! Soon I will be giving some free drawing and art classes at the Secret Gallery. So if you are in the Doolin area you are welcome to join the Art Classes.