In January I proposed a series of changes for myself this year, which I would like to revisit this week, to see if any progress has been made. The first was to draw more.
Well, I think I succeeded. I didn’t draw a lot, but I definitely drew more. I got very into doing portrait sketches on index cards in the spring. None drawn from life – except Hockney, top right, copied from a book, and the chap below him, whose name escapes me – the rest are characters that appear from nowhere with their own back stories, past lives and worlds to explore:
I also loved drawing trees…
And I got back into a favourite kind of doodling from my childhood. Draw a mess of lines, colour them in. Joy.
This I will definitely carry into 2021. Drawing is wonderful, restful, colourful, imaginative, creative, and a joy to do with the kids. It doesn’t matter a bit how ‘good’ one is. It’s playful and healthy, no matter the results. Seems I particularly like portraits and trees, so I think I’ll keep exploring those, and hopefully different mediums too, digital and analogue. Great!
Notes from Ben 