shy in green

I had a bit of ...um ... time ... that I like to call "shy", but in fact, it's my phase where I absolutely hate every line I make, and I want to hide away and never ever try to draw again... but I can't really stop... and only now I realise, this time, most of my "shy drawings" are green... here are just a few of them...

strange world

serious conversation

les chats de Charles Baudelaire

embarrassing sketches

sulking cats

OK, so I've just finished an illustration on a slightly bigger paper format (50cm * 70cm) and now I'm stuck. It happens so often, I might have to come up with a name for that condition... Stuckitis… What-now-itis… I'm not sure is it because "I could never do it again", or is it because I'm too self-criticizing and I don't like the drawing I've finished...

Well, I don't think it's either one. Most of the time, I have SO many new ideas that I simply can't pick one. I can't focus, so they're all in my head... all at once... buzzing and flapping and whizzing...

carnival

Ideas are like smells, they're there, I can feel them, I know them quite intimately, they're packed with sensations and motion, but when I start sketching, they become unreachable. I want to put them all on paper, and sketches always turn out to be beyond disappointing.

I'm a terrible starter.

couch potato

No, let me rephrase that! I'm great at starting at least ten things at once, and then not doing any of them... which is a shame. The best part… what I like most about drawing… is the bit after I'd started something, and passed that second phase. If I get that far, I land in some amazing space where's no time, or thoughts... I become my pencils and paints, and that feeling is the reason why I draw at all.

I hate all my drawings, but I love making them!

Sketches are my biggest embarrassment. I used to love sketching, but now… uh… I cringe when I see unrefined lines, bad proportions, somewhat incorrect perspective… I need to feel that I’m in control, so I start fixing my sketches, and keep fixing them till they stop being sketches.

portraits

Anyway… this time I present you a few pages from my poor little moleskine. They will stay as they are. Paper is too thin, it simply wouldn’t survive my “corrections”.

cat frenzy

I've been drawing cats all day today.

I like best the very first one I drew, of course. 

And the weird things is: I started thinking about dogs very soon after I stared drawing cats. But I didn't let myself get carried away. I continued drawing cats. 

Then!

I wanted to draw raccoons.

I'll be drawing raccoons tomorrow, unless I change my mind, in which case, I might draw bugs, or elephants or armadillos... but one thing is certain... I'll want to draw anything but raccoons less than an hour after I start drawing them.

When I completely commit to doing one single thing, I get amazing (perfectly unrelated) creative ideas, and then all those ideas just go to waste, and leave me thinking I'll never have any new creative thought ever again. 

And then! ........ I get an amazing idea! 

... at about half past 11 (at night)

... and I stay up, happy happy, completely forgetting about time, till everything I see becomes a white smudge created by my lamp light mixing with beautiful colours of sunrise, so I go to bed, get up 3 hours latter, spend all day with metallic taste in my mouth, trying to pretend I had a long night's sleep... and I'm dead at 10 in the evening, and just before I fall asleep, some amazing idea violates my serene tiredness... and I can't do anything, too tired, and I can't sleep... the majestic birth of insomnia.

I hope one day I'll master the skill of writing down those misbehaved ideas, as notes, for future me to criticize them and discover that they weren't really that great.