Figure Drawing – 4-20-2011 – Atlanta Artists Center

Notes: Some quick sketches from tonight’s figure drawing session.  Not really a class, but just time to sit and draw, reevaluate where you are in life.  I don’t know how to do PHP coding, I don’t know marketing strategies, I don’t know a bunch of things that you can put down on a fake resume.  I draw and think, however much that’s worth in today’s world.  It’s tough, working on stuff when you know you’ll never be famous, respected, or remembered.

I often ask myself the logic in burning gas to just drive down to the studio, couple of bucks there, couple of bucks for the paper, just to make marks on it.  Perhaps in its worthlessness, one can find true meaning and value.  Art makes no claim to be worth anything, but I guess it is one of the few things worth doing.  Unlike the same generic job title you see on so many business cards, just in charge of selling widgets to other folks, trying to keep the mirage going.

I couldn’t finish the last drawing in the allotted 45 minutes, but was happy with the results.  The Canson Bisque paper I normally use complemented well with the skin tone of the model.  I ended up just giving the drawing to him, which is something I should have done with all my drawings in the past.  A digital image sitting right here is good enough, don’t need anymore clutter at the house.  If someone finds value in it, that’s good, that’s the purpose of it.

I’ve always wanted to make a short film featuring me drawing random portraits for people on the street and doing it for free or charging 1 cent for a drawing.  When people will inevitably ask me, why charge so little?, (To steal a line from one of my favorite comics), I’ll reply, “…Because that’s all we’re worth.”  You could take that as such a jaded and cynical view of life, but on the flipside, it’s the freedom of realizing we’re not much more than specks waiting to expire.  And that’s okay, makes you realize the brevity, absurdity, and coolness of life.  Us artists, we piddle away at our craft in the face of mounting debt, of job openings that are already filled, in a world where everyone knows the price of everything but the value of nothing.

That’s why it’s the simple things in life, friendship, and memories of days gone by, that really matter and saves us.  Perhaps it all gets lost in my photos and drawings of “girls.”  That seems to be all I am to most people right?  I don’t think too many people get it, even the other artists, stuck in more of the technique of which pencil to use.

Posted in Art and tagged , , , .