Friday, June 22, 2007

I feel I've been here before...


In starting this blog, I am attempting to develop a new habit. I wish to draw and paint. Well, I already do that, but now my goal is to actually finish those little works I'm always blocking out, then getting bored with and abandoning. If I feel a need to post, then I will have to carry on to the end, bitter or otherwise, right?

Challenge number one on the EDM list is "a shoe", and because of this my first drawing posted is of old running shoes. Coincidentally, I recently unearthed a sketchbook from more than twenty years ago. On the very first page was another pen and ink rendering of a tennis shoe. I'm fairly sure that if I could find my other old sketchbooks -- there have been many others -- they each began with various stabs at shoe portraiture. Why is this? Maybe it's an archetype in the collective unconscious of art students everywhere. Or maybe it's just practicality -- you grab a fresh new sketchbook and a pen, look around, and there beneath you, already in a subservient position, is a pair of objects that look as if they would be willing to stay still and not put up too much of a fuss no matter how long it takes to portray them. And so you begin. And so I did, once more.