Draw a hand every day for a month and tell me what happens to you
Ok so I did this thing where I drew my own hand every night for thirty days. Same hand, same angle basically. Just to see if it would stay boring.
Day 1 I wanted to throw the sketchbook across the room. My hands are ugly and I hated every line. Day 11 something shifted and I stopped trying to make it look like a hand and started trying to make it FEEL like the hand that's been doing every single thing for me. Day 30 I cried a little and I'm not even embarrassed about it. It stopped being a hand. It became all the damage and all the work and all the love I've ever done with it.
Nobody tells you that drawing the same boring thing over and over turns into drawing your whole life. I'm not saying everyone should do this but I'm also not not saying it. If you try it tell me what day you break
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okay this hit weird because i spent a whole summer doing the same thing with the same cheap mug on my studio table. not hands, just this ugly brown mug i hated, every morning, same angle. i told myself it was practice. day 14 i stopped drawing the mug and started drawing the mornings. you know? the light on it, where the handle sat, the little chip i kept forgetting was there. by the end i couldn't throw the mug away and that was never the assignment.
the day 11 shift is real though. that's the part nobody warns you about. something stops being an object and starts being a witness. i think that's why we draw at all honestly. just takes thirty days of boring to accidentally find it. lol anyway now i gotta go draw my hand apparently
the witness thing. that's exactly it. i had a lump of clay on my bench that i was supposed to throw away for weeks, just sitting there half-wedged and dry on the edges, and one night i started pressing my thumb into it over and over without thinking. just a rhythm while i was waiting on a glaze cycle. by the time the kiln was done i'd carved a whole face into it. the face of someone i don't know. i kept it.
it's funny how the most boring objects end up holding the most. you draw the same mug every day and suddenly it's the only one that makes sense. i get it completely.