The Joys of Sketching

This week Art Rice, a professor from NC State, was here to help us transition to living in Prague and to adapt to Prague.  I had heard that he is an excellent drawer, so I asked him in an email if we could go drawing around Prague.  He agreed to take some classmates and I on what he calls a "drawing safari." We met at the Institute and headed out to our first space to draw.

I could not understand when I asked classmates to go with me on the “drawing safari”, the majority of responses consisted of moaning and/or some comment on their lack of drawing skill. 

Art has a theory about drawing:  We are all born with this excessive amount of bad drawings. When we draw a bad one, we should be glad because we’re getting rid of them. Whoever draws the most bad drawings wins!

That gave us a lot of encouragement, myself included.

Art has a skill drawing with pencil. I wanted to use my marker so badly, but since Art was here I thought I’d try drawing with pencil.

This is the first place that we stopped to draw. It was a small courtyard. Most of these courtyards are hidden from the main street.

After I drew this for 30 minutes, I walked over to Art and sat down.  He saw my drawing and said “Can I give some hints?”

“Absolutely!”

He critiqued how I drew the tree. He told me my ground plane lines looked like a wall instead of the ground. He told me it was a good first attempt.  I told him that I am afraid of pencil and that I prefer marker because I can be quick in my strokes. When I drew the sketch above, I tried so hard to make it exact, and it wasn’t. I decided that I had to apply my “loose marker approach” to pencil drawing.

We walked up towards the river and sketched a few feet apart. Other people walked by us on the sidewalk, stopped and took our picture. So many people would do a double take. They would turn around to see what we, as students, were seeing.

Below is the view and my sketch.

Wow. What a difference between this sketch and the previous one.

Art told us that drawing shows you what you like best about a certain something, but in this case that something is space.

When the 30 minutes to draw ended, I was disappointed that the sketch wasn’t finished. But, that’s the beauty in it. (when is a drawing ever complete?)

Next stop was over Charles Bridge, to Lesser Town.

We pulled off in a side courtyard. It was right next to the Lock Gate. Couples put their initials on a lock, then lock it to the gate and toss the key in the water. That way, you can never break up.

 

I sat on the cobblestone street as I drew.

Again, people walking by did a double take at what I was drawing, since it must be of importance if someone is drawing it, right?

By this sketch, I felt more comfortable with pencil drawing. It isn’t as scary anymore!

We walked for a long time, with stops along the way for lunch, dessert and coffee, beer, and dinner.

We covered a lot of ground today and I like Prague just for the fact that you can walk everywhere and anywhere. There’s never a time where I felt scared or nervous to walk around.

While we walked there was tons of laughter, stories, interesting architecture, and just pure fun with Art and my classmates.  Today was fantastic. It was exciting exploring drawing in a new medium. I was introduced to a new way of approaching my drawing. I never thought I could learn so much from a simple "drawing safari." Even though it was windy and cold, I wanted to keep drawing! I could have gone all day drawing and walking to new destinations, but the 3 we did today wore me out. 

It got to the point where everywhere I looked, I thought "how would i draw this?" I love this feeling. I want to capture everything I see with a drawing! Life is good. Drawing brought joy to me today, as it does most days! Can't wait to sleep so I can get back out there and draw tomorrow!