Eyefuls of city

A shortish walk from where I was this morning to the centre of the centre gave me so much to think about. It's such a cacophony, don't you think? My walk went something like

Eyes: box squashed, nice shadows, look at lumpy walls with fern growing, people, people, funny teeth, busy at bustop, round man, lit up security guards in blue, picturesque, skinny tourist, shiny sunglasses, oooh rollerblades, old cafe - kitsch? empty? white paint,nice backdrop for ironic photoshoot, my own reflection - argh hair frizzy, and stand up tall girl, round building, love those round builings, T-shirt shop, peer in, can I see, what are those pictures, reflections on glass, peer some more, where is the decimal point in that price tag, I like those frames, look back aruond, argh, two men there smoking, I am being observed, face blunt and tired, lady dozing - the nod I guess from her skin - into an open book, now there is a lady with very purple tights, click clack shoes, short girl funny lips, tall girl, pale downy face and knowing smile, boy with great jeans, bus stop crowded, old lady like a turtle, her neck is shiny and lined eyes peering from hoods, she gives me a shrewd look, slow walking, short dress too close to underpants, cellulite, smallish tattoo, pouchy faced dough nosed man, straight from hotel looking people, matching couple, lumpy fountain, buses dozing, I thought this building was red? Oh no, red is on the inside, blank faced stone out here, argh greasy hair and trolley weilding man, tiny, but his hair is side parted and he brushes it down with deliberate open palm, foyer, hey snazzy, picture, I'd like a wig like that, low couches, quiet in here, peaceful, open, there's the door.

This commentary is entirely usual. As is seeing things and thinking 'aah good photo'. What's new in how I've been seeing things lately is thinking 'how would I do this in black and white?' Thanks to drawing class, in the city at night, I now wonder about rendering shadows, about refelections, about things that are dark in colour but in the light, as opposed to lighter things in shadow, in the same field of view.

Last week I did my first streetscape. Possibly my first ever - which kind of surprises me because I think of myself as someone who draws, but really, my drawing experience is quite limited, and light-on. Post school my drawing has been mostly life drawing (an enthusiastic but short lived bout when I lived in the blue mountains), which doesn't really require a whole landscape, you can kinda just place figure on chair/mat/draped cloth hanging in space, drawing from the imagination (course at NAS a coulpe of years back), which was great fun, and involved drawing actual objects, just kind of stylised, from memory and without actually having anything in front of you, and my own drawing for fun, which is mostly designy/illustratey and lately has involved a lot of monsters rendered in oil pastels and scratchy pencil.

None of which really prepares you for 'how the f**k do I make that dark shadowy patch of the world exist on my page? Where does that end and this begin? Am I really drawing what I see or what my brain is telling me I should be seeing?' etc. Great fun though, if somewhat demoralising at times, when you find yourself shortcutting to that awkward panic that renders (excuse the pun) any drawing flat and painful. There is soemthing magical in the way that images made by hand channel not just your knowledge of the medium but the feeling you have about being there doing the image making. As our lovely tutors point out, it's all about the care given. To be able to look and transcribe and stay with the looking and transcribing without judging the marks you make - and worse judging and getting angry or despondent and trying to change them. To bring an open heart, like a child, and be ok with making changes or learning or even discarding what you made. To focus on the looking rather than the recording, which in tangible terms means actually spending more time looking at the object than looking at the page. It requires a lot of trust, drawing, trust that the looking and the feeling with translate into an image that looks 'good', rather than trying to make marks one by one that look good. If that makes any sense at all...?

So yes, did my first shadowy night time streetscape last week, and enjoyed it immensely, somehow managed to stay with it for the hour and stayed enthusiastic and not judgemental for the entire time. Used charcoal, which is perfect for filling up the page with light and shade. Drew cars, which I don't even drive let alone look at normally, and they came out swell - little round nosed hunkering beasts. Had a tree and signs and a gutter and leaf shadows on a wall, and I loved drawing it all. Funny how some nights it just clicks*.

[*I think it helped that after having felt a bit despondent about my earlier efforts in the class, and kind of having skipped a few weeks ('busy dahling, work you know'), I had a dream the night before last weeks class, in which the softly spoken English tutor told me 'it's ok to not be good at it - that's why you go to a class' and I had a strong feeling that the going and trying was the important bit, that there was soemthing important, and good, in the being there and trying.]