What's Important?

What's important? This is the question that I should ask myself whenever I sit down to draw or paint, but especially when I draw or sketch. When I pick up a pen or pencil, I crave accuracy and details because of who I am and how I am. In the moment, I get caught up in the process and it's all good. When I'm done and I look at the finished item, the lack of accuracy is both glaring and disheartening, at times.

It's easy to prop myself back up, when I think back to the beginning of the year and how scary it was to even try and put a line on a piece of paper. I also get that my inner critic is getting a little louder, since my expectations are higher. At the beginning of the year, I was thrilled if what I created even vaguely resembled the actual object. Lastly, I get that we are all our own worst critics.

For the rest of the 30 days of sketching when I post a picture, that's it. Here's what I did. I am going to cut the verbal critique.

As a point of comparison, here's where I was early in the year. I could not see where the lines should go or how to draw them in the correct direction. In this example, I was trying to copy someone from a video.

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I sure don't have the answers, but my questions keep getting better when I look at things. Figuring out how to represent 3-D reality in two dimensions is hard. My kitchen sink presented some challenges today. 

Getting back to the original point, I want to think about what's important. What do you need to capture the bare essence of a kitchen sink, a tissue box, a cat? That doesn't mean sketching quickly. It means thinking more about each line and whether adding it is essential.