On simplified drawing and personal blogs

Lately I’ve been striving for a more simplified drawing style, so yesterday I decided to practice in my Sketchbook Journal with a photo reference—a picture I liked from Chris Glass.*

If you click on the link, you’ll see that I left out many details from the photo in my drawing—other people, gadgets, furnishings—but I learned again that what you leave out is as important as what you leave in when drawing. It’s difficult to make those choices.

I don’t think I could have sketched this scene had I been present and drawing in the moment. First, I haven’t yet mastered the challenge of people moving all the time. Yikes! And second, there is SO MUCH to look at in one space! I have never been to Five Guys in my life (it must be an east coast chain), but in person, I’m sure I would have tried to draw it all—and that would not have worked for this drawing like it does in the photo.

I have only started following Chris Glass, by the way, and I’m very glad I added his site to my RSS Reader. The photographs from and about his life are lovely and the brief posts allow me to get to know an interesting person.

It turns out that all my favorite blogs are personal blogs: essentially digital journals from interesting people who are expressing something of—and at least partly for—themselves. And by sharing themselves, readers get the benefit of perspectives, ideas, expertise and inspiration we wouldn’t have otherwise.

Sometimes I worry about the downsides of the internet—alienation, fragmentation, social breakdown…But then we also have gifts like this.

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*Just a reminder that I know it is never okay to copy someone else’s work unless one is doing so to learn only—which is what I am doing here. Also, it’s important to give credit to the original artist.

Immediate, Imperfect and Grounding

“In the journal I do not express myself more openly than I could do to any person; I create myself.”—Susan Sontag

I am someone who has kept journals for most of my life. And Sontag gets it right. I don’t write and draw (paint and collage) in journals to share secrets with myself.

I mean, ok, sure, some pages are private, but mostly, as I look at my shelf of notebooks filled with words and pictures, I see that these meditations and ruminations are me becoming myself.

Through this work, I am stepping into my artist self—and I am stepping into greater understanding that what I do might be helpful to others.

So this personal blog is a journal, too, though one I have yet to successfully sustain—or be sustained by. What would happen, I wonder, if I remove the heavy lifting of writing, editing, publishing, and just approach it for what it is: a personal blog—a digital journal—immediate and imperfect and grounding?

What if, like my physical Sketchbook Journal, I take just a little time every day to capture just one thought or idea—one snapshot—as briefly as possible? What would I choose to express? To share?