2012

Perhaps I am fooling myself when I say that this year (2012) I will draw at the very least 15 minutes a day.

Knowing myself how I do, and you (dear reader) knowing me how you know me, realize that I am a consummate procrastinator.

In addition, I can't seem to finish anything.  And when I do, I finish it poorly.

As I have expressed to my artistically gifted children, of which I was when I could count myself as a child, Practice Makes Perfect.

From as far back as I could remember I drew everyday.  Sometimes all day.  My sister and I would make little flea cities and populate them with flea cars and flea airplanes.  We would have flea bridges over little flea rivers.  All on one sheet of 8.5" x 11" sheet fed paper that we had torn the edges off of.  The details we could jam in there was astonishing.  And we had fun for hours doing it.

I would sit in a big arm chair and draw random monsters, claws and fangs while I watched hours of Godzilla movies on Dr. Paul Bearers Creature Feature.  One of my fondest memories is drawing in the margins of my big puzzle book when I was about 12 years old while I watched Forbidden Planet one Saturday afternoon.  I wish I still had those little doodles.

In the 8th grade I had an art teacher, Mr. Brown.  He gladly let my dark and strange imagination run rampant on paper.  Dinosaurs, bloody eye balls, broken glass filled my little portfolio.  Again, I wish I had kept even a fraction of those drawings.

11th grade.  The last time I remember drawing with any great frequency. The last time I remember enjoying drawing AND knowing that I was good at it.  Disembodied hands ended in shattered bones and spouting blood vessels.  Tendons and muscles expanded and contracted in the vacuum of space. Dozens of mythical creatures and beasts that I drew out of whole clothes flowed out of my imagination and onto paper.  It was glorious.

Then it stopped.

I stopped Drawing.

Why?  It was important to me.  It was something that allowed me to express myself and stand out from the crowd.  (Being a nerd made this aspect very appealing)  I loved it.

I lament the fact that I stopped drawing every day.  And I've lamented long enough.  So I will draw 15 minutes a day for the next 30 days.  And I will post those 'drawings' for comment and/or ridicule.

Let's see where this goes together.

Greg