Draw-A-Thon

Today, Ned and I went to Draw-A-Thon, which is a series of very elaborate figure drawing events, which are long, sort of crazy and very different then an average drawing class. They are organized by a very cool artist, called Micheal Alan.

Like a lot of the activities that we've been involved with since the new rule of not refusing any invite, unless we already have plans for the day, this is something I've been wanting to do for ages, but just never got around to it till now.

The session was 7 hours long, and we came in, not knowing if we are going to do 7 hours, stay our half an hour and leave or somewhere in the middle. Eventually we stayed for a little over 3 and a half hours then left.

I had really strong feeling through this, a lot of them was frustration and anger about the event not being the way I wanted it to, about all the distractions, about the models moving all the time and blocking each other, about people going into and out of the room all the time, about how drawing event should be planned in general. Half of the event I was writing a "helpful" witty and cynical blog entry in my head about all this.

Coming home and looking at the drawings, I realized that though there are about 20 pieces of papers with half of a nose or one breast or an arm on them, because the models moves, there are still about 16 drawings that I do like which is a lot.

Also and more important, this drawing session made me try new things, like drawing more then one person in a drawing (though non of those is a drawing that I liked), drawing men, and mostly, having to draw in a much looser way then I'm used to, because of how fast things moved and changed on stage.

I think that my anger and frustration was mostly just me feeling out of control, out of my comfort zone and trying to find someone to blame for feeling so out of my element.