Drawing

Its quite evident that i do not draw even I had joined the art society for 6 years straight. The art pieces that I post on this blog- none of the outlines were of my creation. Actually, I cannot draw anything for nuts if someone were to put a pencil and a blank piece of paper in front of me. This post is not a confession, I take to believe this post as more of an explanation instead.

Back when I was in secondary school and lazing around on Thursday afternoons with a good friend at the art room, we were exposed to various forms of art then: there was oil paintings, watercolors, crafts, glass art, charcoal drawings, pencil sketching and shading. The both of us would be asked to draw and improvise on our older pieces as time went by; my friend would always draw the A grade pictures, I would always end up in a black mess.

Why?

I can never sit down and draw something I remembered or want to draw. While my friend could whip up a beautiful pencil sketch that exactly resembles a scene Chinatown or Benjamin Shears Bridge that we had went the previous week, I cannot picture a still Chinatown or Benjamin Shears Bridge when I am told to recall what I saw last week. Within, that picture was always a movie- with the sounds I had heard then, and everything was moving. Yes, my friend had a more photographic memory (and that's why he joined the photography society after sec 4. My memory was more intuitive, like a recount, and the picture could never be still for me to start deducing where the lines were supposed to go.

Hence my drawings are always out of proportion, when I draw for around a minute, the picture within would have moved to a new perspective, and the corresponding picture would have a sudden change in perspective. Oh those teachers frowned at me- whoever thought of an art student who cant draw for nuts?

But there was something I could do pretty well, and I think that was what that saved me from being kicked out of my CCA. There was a time we were learning about sketching and shading of portraits, and we were asked to touch up on each other's drawings. I could still remember vividly what happened then. I was worried I would mess up his picture, and initially i did- I shaded a layer over the original picture, and found that it did not feel real enough although the shadows were theoretically correct. In my mind I could see her face; yes it was moving again (smiling), but this time I had my friend's outline to lock that mental image in place. So layer after layer of lead I quoted his pretty light sketch (much to his horror)...

In real life, shadows range from light shades to a complete black that obscures any detail. I was obscuring half her pretty face, and three quarters of her hair that my friend had painstakingly drawn the individual strands in last week. While he was silently screaming in agony from the end of the bench, I was going DARKER DARKER DARKER- I didn't stop going darker, until I was satisfied that the picture resembled that mental image I had in my mind.

When class was over our teacher game and graded us, suddenly the looked at my picture and liked it. I forgot what they said about my shading, but I remembered thay had given me an A+. More shockingly, they only gave my friend a A-. They said that his shading was too light and did not have enough contrast...

Suddenly all my lead spamming paid off.

From then I guess they knew that I was more of a touch-up guy than a drawing-guy. When we had younger students in the society and were supposed to teach them, my friend would do most of the delicate drawing and demonstrations, while I was allowed to nose around and chip in my 5 cents worth when the students start drawing themselves. I preferred to work with dark charcoal and heavy oil paintings, because I could mask up my errors more easily by smudging and drawing-over. Others could draw a perfect figure from internal structuring. I had to constantly refine my outlines to define the correct shape it was meant to be.

I guess that was why I preferred writing and stories instead. In stories, the setting is always dynamic, and as every word is written the story progresses along. I stopped drawing after sec 4 and fiendishly starting writing. I never turned back to drawing, partially because I needed a host to enact my knowledge on drawing, and partially because I did not want to take advantage of the other guy.

A levels came and went, and army came. There was once I chanced my bunk mate drawing- he said he was learning how to draw and was more interested in interpreting drawings instead of copying (as my old friend could do very well). The only difference was that he was able to picture things easily from his mind and commit them to paper. Suddenly I see my old self again, this time with greater potential than I could possibly be- We started drawing from simple cartoons, and from there we learn to draw more complex portraits.

The road was quite rough- we were always bickering over how the picture was supposed to turn out, since the constant underlying message was that all these pictures are a personal interpretation, rather than a direct copy of the original. And I was always screaming DARKER DARKER DARKER for fear that we would repeat the mistakes my old friend had committed with his theoretical shadowing. We adapted all types of existing pictures to our own standards (T1.45, T1.2 etc), and many of the pictures drawn did not even have an original picture. Every time we start I thought that it would be a fiasco, but they turned out fine nevertheless.

Today I am glad that we don't have to go through that crazy road anymore (thought it was kinda fun actually). My bunk mate's already got the hang of 'personal intuitive interpretation' and can cough out pictures that are 'true to the original' and yet 'unique to no one but himself'- Something that my old friend could never understand no matter how many times I tried explaining. Finally I've seen through 'a best of both worlds', with the capabilities of me and my old friend. Finally after 6 years with art as a passive skill I never dare talk about, I can finally bring it back, and be understood at the same time.

Of course I still cannot draw today- I don't think I can draw anything for a very long time to come too, as long as I continue viewing things intuitively. But at least I can impart that fundamental knowledge of intuitive drawing that I had locked within myself to complement the intuitive shading that I could only do- To draw amazing pictures, and to mimic well, and yet know that these pictures completely belong to us.

Full cycle eh? Its also my full cycle too-

I don't really bother about the ownership of these pictures. I believe that being social,Humans were supposed to cooperate should they want to achieve for the better. So if any of you would chance upon the pictures I have posted, or any upcoming pictures I may be posting; you would see that they may be radically different from the original pictures. I'll leave the truth of beauty to the individual self, but at least we all know today that all these completed pictures, be it done by me or my friend or both, are our personal (and combined) interpretation of things. And that by looking at these pictures, you would have seen us as how we truly are.

Indeed, these are what we have to offer- I hope that you guys enjoy these pictures anyway. Have fun.