Have you ever once fantasized developing these ‘artistic’ habits of going to cafes, parks, etc. with a sketchbook of yours to make these everyday sketches in—and hopefully improving upon your own skills—while casually sipping a beverage of your choice or eating a buttery croissant?
You know. Like those artists with a hobby of people-watching and sketching out passing strangers with quite the precision for proportions just from taking a quick look?
Well, I have. Fantasized about it, that is.
It would certainly make for a useful habit and it seems a lot of artists stand by it with the way they usually cite it as one of the main reasons for getting better with their drawing skills.
Thing is—as much as I hate to admit it—it just doesn’t seem to catch on as a habit for me.
Notes, I can take. Well, more like typing out notes on my phone as we’re in the digital age after all, but that still counts, I think.
And I don’t have any issues with outlining lists of what I want and plan to do.
But sketching in public? It still hasn’t quite stuck on as a habit yet.
And not for lack of trying, I assure you.
I love buying pretty and cute-looking notebooks, pens, and other stationery like most girls. But I usually end up not putting them to good use as I would probably fill in or write just a few pages with one or the few of the variety of pens/markers that I have and then leave the rest of the pages blank out of careless neglect.
I started to think about why that is and I’ve come up with a few possible reasons.
- 1. Pressure
It’s because I started out fantasizing it as a cool and fancy artistic habit that I unwittingly placed a certain amount of pressure on myself that what I draw/sketch needs to look automatically good—and by good, I mean good in a “natural”, “effortless”, and “talented” way…which kind of defeats the purpose of “sketching”.
Even more so as it would be in a public setting and that there’s always the chance that a stranger might casually glance at your work…and be unimpressed.
- 2. Lack of purpose and—even when established—lacking the determination to go through with it.
Again, due to fantasizing about manifesting it as a habit, I don’t put enough thought into what I plan and hope to sketch in what is meant to be a short time frame that’s a realistic duration for loitering in a cafe while having a drink.
So without any plans or goals in mind, I look at my sketch book and end up just blanking out instead of drawing anything worthwhile. It’s not an art block if I’m not even clear about what I wanted to draw in the first place
- 3. The wrong approach
I presume that the habit of drawing and sketching in public would be an extension or natural progression from one’s own already existing habit of drawing and sketching at home.
If you don’t even have much of a habit of sketching or drawing in the privacy of your own home, would you still be able to develop such habits outside of your home?
I do sketch and draw at home, mind you. But I regret to say that it has not developed into enough of a habit for me to carry on wanting to continue drawing when I go outside.
I think that makes for the hardest hitting reason for why I haven’t mastered this fancy artsy hobby to this day.
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Now that I’ve come up with these reasons, here’s to hoping that I’ll eventually overcome them.