This story isn't starting from the ground up, you see. I have a bit of experience drawing–you'd know that if you'd been with me those winters (history for another day)– and so although out of practice and bad as I am, it could be worse. Regardless, I don't have a knack for drawing as you'll soon see.
Right now I see first flecks of rain on the window pane, a mighty cool day out of the end of October and not September which it is...but I stopped drawing consistently all the way back in spring. That was the last "sprint." You see, back in April I was drawing hours and hours each day–for a bit hitting double digits! This kind of thing has happened four times or so: I'll start drawing, first slowly and increasingly steadily for a couple month, and then fervently until I drop the whole thing for a long time, half a year or so. Those intervals of intense drawing that make me quit, they're what I'm calling sprints.
So in April I was sprinting (but had started drawing January), though in truth I did the most intense drawing in March: by April I was getting tuckered out and then May came along as a bit of a postscript. But even as I was winding down, in April I had my crowning week: I drew over 110 pages in seven days, no joke–sure, some of those pages took only ten minutes, but others took over an hour. Did them all the same. This was only possible because coronavirus got me stuck at home in April, and suddenly I had plenty of time, so I drew and I drew until I lost all interest. 110 is by far my record, the week before the 110, I had done maybe 80 pages.
The way I pushed myself, that spring of coronavirus, was quite simple. I had a regiment lined up every day: draw outside at least 30 min., figure draw 30 min., copy one comic page, draw from imagination 20 min., etceteretera...So I'd draw when I was uninterested and tired, all to hit the schedule. And that daily drawing quota was the issue–I realized it even back then. I was obsessed with output, as if giving myself the symptoms would invite the disease. Nope, the only disease I got was fatigue and bloating daily goals (first it was one hour of mandatory drawing, then two and then five or six). But you know what? Even in the middle of the sprint when I was fatigued and unhappy and had to drag myself and stay up to midnight to finish the regiment all off, I'd wake up early raring to go. No, it wasn't until the first day I didn't finish the schedule that things went wrong.
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One day just before that happened, I woke up shaking and couldn't stop. Late April I think, after a lot of nights of a little less sleep than the last. Whole body jittering as I woke up, and it took a couple of minutes in bed to calm my body down, relax. It was independent of my consciousness, trembling with energy as if to go on even though it was tired. Strange sensation, never felt anything like it.
That jittering energy felt surface-level; not artificial per say, but not whole and healthy either. And when I did calm down all the energy faded. I felt exhausted, and my motivation plummeted, like I had to jitter on or drop it all. My excitement never truly came back, even though I kept drawing maybe three weeks more. So this spring, the spring wherein coronavirus sprang, I was unsustainable and unhealthy. As it went on, dread of drawing filled me more and more...of course, it was also exhilarating. What if I had kept going?
Whatever the case, no more regiments like that. Because all my drawing practice has been like that, this spring and past years: brief sprints of passion and then no drawing for many months. I've learned from those sprints that drawing every day is a sure path to improvement, but forcing yourself to draw all day will exhaust you, and improvement will be slow because of it. So each day, I'll draw a bit and use everything my brain has to offer. No more rote copying, merely looking at lines and distances and shapes. I'll think as hard as I can for a little bit and that will be much better than thinking a little bit ten hours a day (which is what I was doing: force yourself to do something all day, every day and see what happens) Moreover, I don't intend it to stop after a couple of months. It'll be...well, who knows how long? At least a year you'll see. Consistency and sincerity may make a better kind of force than what drove those sprints. And it's nice to do things other than draw all day. A hammer on the head now:
"What is good is light; whatever is divine moves on tender feet": first principle of my aesthetics.
-Nietzsche
Let's draw. Perhaps where words carry meaning, drawings carry none and plainly show.
[https://i.imgur.com/Tag3HKd.jpg]
This is all pathetic, I am pathetic. A rusty dream, no radiance. I didn't think very hard today.
How belabored and overwrought! Alas, Nietzsche, we may yet leave a trail of sin.