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Friday, September 14, 2007
Tuesday, September 4, 2007
Terror
Now I'm just scared. I've begun the classes (only had one so far in the design course) and I think it's safe to say I'm a bit shaken up. Now, apparently, I'm supposed to "learn" how to draw. I'm not shooting for self portraits or anything here, mostly drafting type drawing with a landscape design angle, but I do have to do a fair amount of drawing. Going into the class I knew there would be something involved that could be called on some level "drawing." However, I was thinking this had more to do with lines and circles and things I could draw by using straight edges and such. True, the class will be much of this but fear struck when I was told to buy a sketch book and then told to practice free hand drawing.
I haven't drawn free hand since elementary school. I thought I was good then, I wasn't, and whatever ability I did posses has left me. I bought the sketch pad and the other day decided to give it a go. I tried to start with something "easy." I chose a dryer. As it turns out, dryers are not easy to draw. I began with a circle for the door and a quarter way around into the arc I was already sweating and lost.
The past month my wife and I have been painting our apartment. This first drawing experience sort of reminded me of the painstaking never-ending, seeming regeneration that is painting. One walks into a room, gives it a good look over and thinks, "this will be easy to paint." Somewhere between that moment and dipping the brush into the paint can for the first time the room somehow grows extra angles, surfaces and features it never had before. Painting is hard for me. It's hard to become so intimate with every inch of the surfaces that make up the boarders of a room. Same with drawing now. It's hard for me to become so aware of the mass amount of detail there is to anything and everything. It's like trying to learn a new language by immersion. There is an exhausted, sort of irritable feeling that comes over one that is only reserved for, I suppose, language retention, painting and drawing. It's like the feeling one gets in their legs when running only in their brain.
So yes, I've begun the class and I feel very out of place. Sitting in the back (there were no other seats, really), I felt like an impostor, like it is now only a matter of time before I'm found out. I had to buy a T-Square and a paper tube. Now when walking to class I get to look like some kind of architect. This, I suppose, could have its perks. I could see people thinking twice before knowingly, purposely pissing off an architect. Think about it. You may piss an architect off for the afternoon, you may ruin his weekend, but he'll go and design something horrible that you have to deal with, and see every day for the rest of your life. It reminds me of Will Ferrell when he did his rendition of the architect from the second Matrix movie for the MTV awards intro, "Vis a vie!!! Concordantly!!!" "Ergo you will shut your yapper now or I'm going to architect a world of pain all over your candy ass." Something like that, that's how I feel partly.
Or I could go pushing my nose into everyone's business just as long as I'm carrying the T-square, "hey is everything alright here, can I help, I am an architect." Perhaps I'll start rolling everything. I'm sure the attorneys I work for would love trying to read their recent motion whilst trying to keep the edges from rolling in on it. "Oh yeah, sorry about that, I was toting my work around in my paper tube...had it rolled up in my latest project."
Either way my palms are all sweaty and I have all this lead I need to figure out how to use. This is good, though. I've always sort of wanted to dabble in the drafting field and often kicked myself for never checking it out. This new class endeavor, however, has awakened another beast, besides terror, that being the beast of attempting to find, collect and then proceed to grow different plants from seed. It's basically the equivalent of the person who decides to start making all their food from scratch or the one who wants to build a table and not just buy a finished one. So, in this, I've found myself online lately reading up on how to cultivate Ginkgo tree seeds, where to buy the same cheap, or how to find them, not to mention calling my mother asking her to collect seeds from all the plants in her yard (there are many) since it's fall and all and everything is about to go to seed.
Needless to say, I think I'm enjoying myself in all of this. If any of you have seeds to cool plants or trees (legal please) send them my way if you have no use for them. Take me along with you this fall on any country drives you happen to go on that I might tag along with my homemade plant press in hand and collect specimens which I may identify and mount. I'll wear a bonnet if you'd like.
I haven't drawn free hand since elementary school. I thought I was good then, I wasn't, and whatever ability I did posses has left me. I bought the sketch pad and the other day decided to give it a go. I tried to start with something "easy." I chose a dryer. As it turns out, dryers are not easy to draw. I began with a circle for the door and a quarter way around into the arc I was already sweating and lost.
The past month my wife and I have been painting our apartment. This first drawing experience sort of reminded me of the painstaking never-ending, seeming regeneration that is painting. One walks into a room, gives it a good look over and thinks, "this will be easy to paint." Somewhere between that moment and dipping the brush into the paint can for the first time the room somehow grows extra angles, surfaces and features it never had before. Painting is hard for me. It's hard to become so intimate with every inch of the surfaces that make up the boarders of a room. Same with drawing now. It's hard for me to become so aware of the mass amount of detail there is to anything and everything. It's like trying to learn a new language by immersion. There is an exhausted, sort of irritable feeling that comes over one that is only reserved for, I suppose, language retention, painting and drawing. It's like the feeling one gets in their legs when running only in their brain.
So yes, I've begun the class and I feel very out of place. Sitting in the back (there were no other seats, really), I felt like an impostor, like it is now only a matter of time before I'm found out. I had to buy a T-Square and a paper tube. Now when walking to class I get to look like some kind of architect. This, I suppose, could have its perks. I could see people thinking twice before knowingly, purposely pissing off an architect. Think about it. You may piss an architect off for the afternoon, you may ruin his weekend, but he'll go and design something horrible that you have to deal with, and see every day for the rest of your life. It reminds me of Will Ferrell when he did his rendition of the architect from the second Matrix movie for the MTV awards intro, "Vis a vie!!! Concordantly!!!" "Ergo you will shut your yapper now or I'm going to architect a world of pain all over your candy ass." Something like that, that's how I feel partly.
Or I could go pushing my nose into everyone's business just as long as I'm carrying the T-square, "hey is everything alright here, can I help, I am an architect." Perhaps I'll start rolling everything. I'm sure the attorneys I work for would love trying to read their recent motion whilst trying to keep the edges from rolling in on it. "Oh yeah, sorry about that, I was toting my work around in my paper tube...had it rolled up in my latest project."
Either way my palms are all sweaty and I have all this lead I need to figure out how to use. This is good, though. I've always sort of wanted to dabble in the drafting field and often kicked myself for never checking it out. This new class endeavor, however, has awakened another beast, besides terror, that being the beast of attempting to find, collect and then proceed to grow different plants from seed. It's basically the equivalent of the person who decides to start making all their food from scratch or the one who wants to build a table and not just buy a finished one. So, in this, I've found myself online lately reading up on how to cultivate Ginkgo tree seeds, where to buy the same cheap, or how to find them, not to mention calling my mother asking her to collect seeds from all the plants in her yard (there are many) since it's fall and all and everything is about to go to seed.
Needless to say, I think I'm enjoying myself in all of this. If any of you have seeds to cool plants or trees (legal please) send them my way if you have no use for them. Take me along with you this fall on any country drives you happen to go on that I might tag along with my homemade plant press in hand and collect specimens which I may identify and mount. I'll wear a bonnet if you'd like.
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