You yellow-bellied, Lily-livered....DRAW!

Drawing. It's difficult, isn't it? That's why, in my forever increasing naivety, I decided to take a drawing module this year. It. was. tough.
We didn't really have a drawing instructor, but we had lovely trips out with Kevin Petrie who did landscape drawing along a freezing river, lots of drawing with your 'wrong' hand, one line drawings (love those) and other left-brain right-brain activities were great fun. Then we were left to our own devices. I drew my (poor, foolish) friends.

My brief was an investigation into tribalism, which, meant I should have focussed on earrings, and haridos and whatnots and fandangs. Oh, dulling, ornaments are so very, very dry. So I continued to draw my poor, deluded acquaintances.

The wodnerfully large-headed Mike Holden, there. This, although obviously delightful, wasn't...well it wasn't very good.
So what should one do when one has tired of drawing ones friends? Obviously photograph oneself, photocopy the image a bunch of times and draw over the top. I'm surprised you even had to ask.

I have approximatley two thousand photos of myself as tribal warrior/queen/shaman and I enjoy them. But I had the same problem most of my compatriots had, we see drawing as actors see a script. No actor would march out on stage and simply show the audience the script, it's not the thing, the play's the thing. Although, I'm sure Brecht or one of those geezers would probably love such a play.
So I mades stuff. It was rather like Christmas Eve, I was trying to convince myself that this was a stepping stone to drawing, but in the back of my mind I knew I was trying to fool myself much like on Christmas Eve I would have a conversation with myself along the lines of;
'Now don't be upset if you don't get the life-size barbie you wanted, they probably couldn't get it'
And then a little voice would say 'But they did, didn't they? You can't fool me!'
'No, no, now, don't get excited'
'Too late! I'll keep saying I'm not going to get the dolly and then I'm definitely going to get the dolly.'
'You're not getting the dolly'
'Ah-ha!'
Perhaps that's not as familiar a conversation to people who have siblings but that's how I felt. And inevitably, I didn't draw my sculptures. I didn't draw on them. They're lovely, and I'll photograph them with an actual camera, not my poor shoddy mobile later today. I intend to continue in my vein of drawing for the forseeable future, it makes things (images, people, ideas, plans) clearer. Huzzah for drawing!