Found a drawing from 2016 in my old portfolio and I want to cry
Dragged out the old portfolio tonight to find a reference photo and there it was, this charcoal piece from 2016. Before I knew anything. Before I'd burned through a hundred bad drawings.
And here's the thing. It's good. Like, actually good. The hand is a little off and the proportions aren't right but god the FEELING in it. That rawness. I remember being so embarrassed by that piece I almost threw it away. I thought because it wasn't technically right it wasn't worth anything.
Now I'm sitting here with the work I've made this month, cleaner, more confident, and I keep thinking, I want some of that back. That person didn't know what she was doing and she didn't care. She just needed to get it OUT.
I don't know if you get more naive as you learn or what. But I'm going to try something tomorrow. I'm going to paint like I don't know anything. See what comes up. Scared it'll be shit. Scared it'll be the best thing I've made in years. Maybe both.
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This hits so close to home. I have an etching plate from my first year that I almost destroyed because the line work was a mess and I thought I didn't know what I was doing. Pulled it out last year and it had this urgency I haven't matched since. The technical stuff came later, but that thing was alive.
There's something about the discipline of getting better that smooths the edges off. You trade rawness for control and you don't always notice what you gave up. I think about it a lot actually, whether the answer is chasing that feeling back or finding a way to carry it into the cleaner work. I don't know that going backward is possible, but maybe the question is how to keep both.
Did you keep the drawing or did you throw it out in the end?
That bit about trading rawness for control really got me. I think I know exactly what you mean. I look back at some of my early acrylic stuff and the paint handling is a mess, but there's something in it I can't quite recreate now. Like I was so unselfconscious I just went for it.
I've been trying lately to do the opposite of chasing it, if that makes sense. Like, I'll do a quick study with a timer, no fixing allowed, and force myself to keep that looseness on purpose. It doesn't always work but sometimes I get a little bit of that alive feeling back, just with better drawing underneath.
Do you still have the plate or did you end up pulling a print from it?
The timer thing!!! ok that's so smart actually. Forcing the looseness on purpose instead of waiting for it to happen by accident. I've been doing these ten minute warmups where I don't let myself stop moving the charcoal, no matter how wrong it goes, and you're right, sometimes you catch that alive feeling with actual bones under it.
And yeah, the unselfconscious thing. God. I remember hating that I couldn't get back to not caring, like caring had ruined something in me. But maybe that's it, you don't chase it, you just set conditions where it can happen and hope it shows up. I'm stealing your study idea this week.
the etching plate thing, i felt that in my chest. that URGENCY. that's the word i couldn't find. the stuff we make before we know what we're doing has this pulse because we're not editing ourselves yet, we're just trying to get it OUT.
i've been thinking about it nonstop since i found that piece. is it even possible to go back? i don't think you can un-know what you know. but maybe the answer isn't chasing it, it's learning to trust the clean work enough to be messy in it on purpose. like, keep the control but let some of the panic back in.
that plate, you still have it? i hope you kept it. stuff like that is a time capsule of who you were before you got good at pretending.