I'm putting an end to the people project. It has been feeling not quite right but I couldn't tell why. Then a friend sent me a link to Alison Bechdel talking about how she drew her wonderful (tragi)comic memoir, Fun Home, which is one of my favourite books. Watching the clip I realised what's wrong with my people drawings. They are too flat and lifeless. It's more or less copying and not terribly exciting. If all I want to do is copy photos, I think I've proven I can do that to a certain extent, so the project already feels defunct.
What I really want to do is start putting together drawings for my own graphic memoir. I didn't think I was ready or had enough experience, but I just have to start. And doing that is a lot more meaningful to me than copying faces from photos for the next three months. I'm not going to put a time limit on this - it's going to be a huge effort. I'm just going to work on it as and when and I may or may not share what I'm doing here. But I will continue to draw whatever I like, whenever I like and post drawings here when I fancy it. No artificial deadlines or undue pressure.
I do have other project ideas though, projects that are not related to drawing, things I've been wanting to do for ages. Now I can finally start! I won't put a time limit on it either, unless it makes sense to do so. I think I was trying to recreate some of the atmosphere of the original 100 days project with the whole 50 faces in a 100 days thing, but it didn't fit, and not only because I was the only person doing the project. So...here's to doing things that fit.
1 comment:
Wow! I love the new look! Clearly I need to ask for help on doing something about mine. And I love the idea of doing "things that fit". I look forward to reading/seeing excerpts from your graphic memoir. I'm not sure when one ever has "enough experience" for a memoir. Things is, I think it depends who's reading/viewing it, right? There are many people who have not had as much experience as you in a lot of areas. And never exactly the same kind of experience. Sometimes the joy of reading a memoir is identifying with the experience that someone has written about.
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