This week I stopped thinking about draftsmanship and focused on staying loose. My drawings seem to turn out better that way. It's weird. It's as if something else takes control of the drawing, not ME. I think when I "let go" it's like when a musician plays on feel, rather than thinking about every individual note and where to put their fingers. Soon, you've played the piece and you don't know how it happened. It's muscle memory.
It's very hard to push yourself in that zone, because you always want to control your work. It's how you feel mastery. You want to feel that you control every aspect of your art in look, feel, style and, if you're an animator, how the drawings move through space and time as well. We crave the control over our art, but really, control could be just knowing how to stay loose. Like the musician knowing when to close his eyes and just play. When to let the muscle memory take over.
I have a book called Alla Prima, by Richard Schmid. He says in the book that "Looseness is not a frivolous departure from control.... It arises from the freedom which comes from superb control." It's funny, that looseness looks like the opposite, doesn't it? Sometimes brevity, and the absence of rendering feels like the artist has nothing more to offer than a few carefully placed lines, but in this artist's humble opinion, those very few, select lines are the hardest ones to draw.
Anyway, back to the Schmid quote, *SIGH*, I would definitely never presume that I have superb control, but I do get better results being loose. I can't wait until I feel that the control is superb.
Until next time,
Tiffanny
