Find The Essence!



Cute cat brooch by Lucy for fi&me

 

"Rooted in drawing is the desire to create..."

If, like me, you are on a creative journey, you might want to ponder this question? Is being creative essentially about finding the essence of what you love to do?

For me the drive to create has always been found in drawing.

Whatever medium I use to craft and create this is where I always return. For the most part, it feels like home. But it can feel, on occasion, a slightly scary place because it is exposing. What if I'm found out?  That my human characters aren't perfectly figurative, that proportions might be out? That really I'm not THAT good!

Aaargh! See how quickly self-doubt can escalate! Ha! (Quickly beats those 'mind monkeys' off with a stick!)

I truly believe that practicing, and more importantly, enjoying the process of honing a skill is the key to being successful at it, regardless of the end result.

When Lucy and I started to attend craft fairs with our vintage inspired business Fi&Me we were exploring how far we could take our creativity. We were having fun and using a whole cohort of techniques that we had been taught over the years from various wonderful people in our lives, family members, teachers and crafts people whose work we admire.

 It was fun! For example, I love to make soft toys based on my designs and inspired by mid-century design. I learnt to crochet, make basic origami and stitch felt embroideries of my Babushka Doll illustrations. But gradually over the 5 years that our little collective has existed we always came back to one thing...drawing.

Rooted in drawing is the desire to create. On a personal level drawing helps me test out my design idea before I commit. This can apply to all art forms, not just art and craft. Last week, for example, I happened to turn on the TV to see Andrew Marr (himself an accomplished draftsman) interviewing  Sir Anthony Sher. It was fascinating to hear him talk about how he uses drawing when developing a character, in drawing he discovers more about them;

 “I do portaits,” actor Sir Antony Sher told the BBC’s Andrew Marr. “I often find that I’m discovering how a character feels by drawing them.”  http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02mjh09

If I had to choose one aspect of my practice and I could only do that forever, it would be drawing. No contest. But why choose? Drawing has the power to enhance many inter-related art forms.

What is your favourite medium? It might be needle point or collage, or water colour might be the easiest thing to warm up with and get your creative juices flowing?

 I think a lot of what puts people off is that the image they may see and want to create is at odds with what spills out onto the paper with the first doodles/paint sketches.

Learning to be ok with this is the key I believe. Believe it or not, quite often what I think I will draw and what I actually draw are very different but I've learnt to be ok with that and then all of a sudden you might find you have created your own style anyway!

 

:) x