Questions and Sketches
- Rachel Bennett
- Jan 20, 2017
- 5 min read
Hello everyone, and welcome back to this week’s blog post. For this week, I was actually hoping for some feedback and suggestions from you, my readers, on how I can improve what I’m doing. I absolutely love writing this every week, and keeping my website up to date with everything I’m doing, but I’ve realised that I have now been doing this for nearly three months and I have yet to even ask you what you would like to see here! The feedback I have had has been overwhelmingly positive and I’m pleased (and relieved) to say that everyone I have spoken to about it says that they enjoy reading my posts. However, although I am brimming with ideas, I don’t ever want to bore you with something I find utterly fascinating that might put you to sleep. (I did my degree in Theoretical Physics, which I obviously found very interesting, but that feeling was not shared by many of the people I tried to excitedly engage with!) So, to start off this week’s post, I was wondering if there was anything in particular you wanted to know, anything you’d like a post about in the upcoming weeks? If there’s anything at all you’re curious about, please let me know either in a comment below, or on any of my other social media platforms!
Now, moving on, I am currently sat on a train, hurtling back to my new home after a jam packed week staying with my Mum. During the week, whilst I was back, I decided it would be an excellent time to take some better pictures for the website, and so I set up a mini photography shoot, using my new camera and a lovely white backdrop, to make the products stand out better. Now, for the white backdrop, I actually used a cardboard box and a white duvet cover, which is perhaps a little unorthodox but I think it worked out pretty well! So as it takes a while to implement those into the actual website (it’s a slow process, so I’m working on it, but it might be a few days before you actually see the new pictures in the shop pages of the website.) I thought I would show you some of the fab-tastic photos I’ve been taking... (I’m still not really sure how to use all the fancy camera features, so there are some overexposed, some not quite as bright, but overall I think they’re much better than the current ones, which I’ve always thought were quite dull, I’m very pleased to be updating them finally!!)
So, now all the updates and bits-and-pieces of the blog are out of the way, I’d like to have a chat about New Year’s Resolutions. I know, I know, it’s nearly the end of January and I’m only now wittering on about them, I know it’s late, I know! However, there is an actual reason I’m leaving it this late to talk about them, and it’s because for the first time in many years, I have actually stuck to my resolution/s until now! Usually I make three or four far-fetched, high-flying resolutions which only the most determined (and certainly not the chocoholic, Rosé-drinking, exercise-averse me) could possibly aim to stick to, and so this year I decided to be realistic, and set one main resolution, that was actually within the realms of possibility. My resolution this year, plain and simple, is to draw more. Well, it’s not that simple, because I could easily cheat that resolution just by drawing once or twice more than last year, but more specifically to try to draw at the very least daily, and to draw more often using references. This resolution came about because the previous Christmas, I received a lovely sketchbook from my Mum, and I resolved to use it only for the highest quality works and pieces, so that when I was finished, I would have a stunning sketchbook, filled front to back with artworks that I was proud to show off. Needless to say, I filled less than half of that entire sketchbook in the year, which I realised this Christmas, when it had been an entire year since I received it. Now, obviously, that isn’t all the work I produced in the entire year, as I have other sketchbooks and I frequently paint on canvases or watercolour paper pads. Nonetheless, I was shocked by how little work I had produced all year, and I also noticed I was in a bit of (what I call) a ‘doodle rut.’ More generally speaking, I suppose, people call this art block, but I don’t like the term, because I don’t think anyone is ever blocked from art, and it’s not that I could no longer draw, rather that everything I drew was similar and I wasn’t evolving or improving like I would have hoped. I think it can be very difficult when you are seeing an extremely talented artist’s works online or in galleries, to remember not to compare your own works to them, as for one reason (as well as many others) you are looking at a finished work, whereas you might be comparing mere sketches of your own. Taking inspiration from the work of others is fantastic but when you’re constantly looking at and admiring the work of professional artists who have been trained or have years and years of experience, it is no wonder that when you then go back to your own work, it might fall short in your own eyes, especially as artists are so often their own worst critics.
And so, my only resolution for this year, and ideally the whole year, is to simply draw more. Draw more often, draw more outside of my comfort zone, and to draw whether or not what I’m producing is absolute rubbish. The more I draw, the more likely that something I’m drawing will be of a higher calibre, and like they say, practice makes perfect! I also think that in today’s world of Facebook likes and Twitter followers, it can be very easy to fall into the trap of thinking that you should post all your sketches or doodles for the instant gratification of a few likes or a new follower, but I’m coming to realise that it is actually better in the long run to keep some sketches and doodles to myself, as often I feel pressured to make sure what I’m drawing is ‘perfect’ or at least up to a certain level of quality, and if this is the case, sometimes this actually makes me reluctant to draw, because I go into the drawing thinking (before I have even set pen to paper) that whatever I produce now must be good or I can’t post it online, and then if I don’t succeed in producing a high quality sketch then I am disappointed in myself, even more so than I would be if I had just sat down to sketch for general artistic improvement, rather than to show others. (I think I might be rambling now, but I hope what I’m trying to say has come across and hasn’t been lost in the babble!)
I think that a lot of artists feel this way, from people I’ve spoken to and from those I follow, and I also believe that this feeling isn’t limited to art only, it’s also a common phenomenon in general, with the technology we have these days, and the instant gratification we feel when we post something online and it is admired, especially for those in my generation, because it’s what we have grown up with and what we now know.
Anyhoooodles, I hope this post wasn’t too introspective-y, and I hope you could understand the point I was trying to get across amidst all the mumbling!
Thanks for reading, and I’ll catch you next week,
Rachel x
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