Drawing a Blank

Day 3

I start the day feeling a little antsy. I don’t really feel like drawing, and a review of the day’s planned exercise does not help with the feeling. For the next exercise I am supposed to craft a view finder out of plastic and card stock, balance it on one of my hands and draw that hand based on the resulting view. Frankly, it just sounds like work and I don’t really want to do it. So I spend some time farting around on the internet instead.

After an hour of monkey clicking around the internet, I finally get around to making a viewfinder…..sort of. I find the clear plastic clipboard I have intended to use as a viewfinder and draw a crosshatch on it. I start to get out the cardstock and decide that it really isn’t necessary. So I sit down to drawn my own hand.

Ten minutes later, I am still irritable and antsy. I stand up and sit down at least a dozen times talking myself into and out of the exercise. Why is this causing me so much ANGST? It is just a stupid drawing exercise, not even assigned by a teacher or a boss. Drawing is not the boss of me and I don’t have to do it. So there! I leave the viewfinder and go get some fresh air.

With about an hour to go until I have to leave to pick up my daughter, I return to my sketchpad. I feel like I committed to try things for 5 days and I really shouldn’t give up. So I decide to do the Day 2 exercise again, because it was pretty peaceful and Zen. I start on the Day 2 exercise and the first 30 minutes are just as they were the day before, but then I start to worry about the time. Determining the passage of time while I am drawing is pretty hard, so I start to worry that I am losing track of time and I won’t leave in time to pick up my daughter. So I start checking the clock every 5 minutes. This lack of focus is making the drawing harder and I am back to not feeling it, so I decide to pack it in for the day.

I don’t know what this means for tomorrow. Maybe this will be one of the hobbies I don’t make it through, or maybe I have been spending too much time with a child who has the attention span of a gnat and it has worn off on me. Whatever the case may be, I put it aside for the rest of the day.