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40 Days of Art: The Secret to Happiness
This is sort of cheating, because I've sort of written about it in the past, but I thought it deserved a revisit, especially as there are people following this art thread now who weren't reading my blog when I posted it originally. (Hi people!)
If you take this drawing-from-life thing seriously, you should carry a sketchbook around with you everywhere. You can learn something from everything around you, whether it's people waiting at a bus stop or the glass of water at the restaurant while you're waiting for the waiter to bring the meal you ordered. Sometimes what you're learning has a practical application; sometimes you're just learning how to draw what you see. It's all important! There's an interesting side effect, though: Being in the habit of drawing from life, and looking at everything as if you were going to sketch it, awakens you to the world around you. Even if you are in a position where you can't reach for your sketchbook, you will notice things, and pay attention to them in ways that you hadn't before. It might not make your world more beautiful, but it will be more interesting. Around every corner may lie some new source of wonder that you would have completely passed over before.
It's been a long time since merely drawing opened my mind up like this so I've come to take it for granted, but whenever I get out of the habit for a while and come back to it, it happens again. I also notice it happening afresh every time I try to take up painting – the world does not necessarily get more colourful, but I notice the colours, the way they interact, the values and hues and textures. Things as mundane as a leaf of ivy against a stone wall, which I've passed every afternoon for the last month and a half, inspire me to crack open the paints.
This wonder and fascination with the world takes you out of yourself and engages you in the moment; in doing so I firmly believe it is a route to happiness. Plenty of self-help gurus talk about 'living in the now' – what better way to let go of everything troubling you than to empty your mind to everything but capturing the sweep of a hillside against the clouds, or your cat lying in the sun, or the way that one tree in the boulevard grew crooked? For ten minutes at a time, nothing else matters; you are absorbed in the beauty of something outside yourself. I know my mood improves when I do a lot of drawing from life and I think this is why; awareness of the wonders of the world overrides the petty concerns gnawing away at me. It's like drugs, only you're improving your brain instead of frying it! And it costs nothing!
An interesting outgrowth of this preoccupation with drawing from life is the Sketchcrawl. Click the link – Enrico Casarosa explains it much better than I would (he invented it, after all) – but take it from me that after the first half hour or so of getting into it, a day spent Sketchcrawling is a fantastic day! You can do it with friends or on your own; you can do it on the official sketchcrawl days if a sense of community and sharing your day on the forum is appealing to you, or you could set a day aside and do it by yourself. (Going with a group of people makes it much harder to drop out, though!) It's a way to dive in the deep end and see what drawing from life can do for you.
If you take this drawing-from-life thing seriously, you should carry a sketchbook around with you everywhere. You can learn something from everything around you, whether it's people waiting at a bus stop or the glass of water at the restaurant while you're waiting for the waiter to bring the meal you ordered. Sometimes what you're learning has a practical application; sometimes you're just learning how to draw what you see. It's all important! There's an interesting side effect, though: Being in the habit of drawing from life, and looking at everything as if you were going to sketch it, awakens you to the world around you. Even if you are in a position where you can't reach for your sketchbook, you will notice things, and pay attention to them in ways that you hadn't before. It might not make your world more beautiful, but it will be more interesting. Around every corner may lie some new source of wonder that you would have completely passed over before.
It's been a long time since merely drawing opened my mind up like this so I've come to take it for granted, but whenever I get out of the habit for a while and come back to it, it happens again. I also notice it happening afresh every time I try to take up painting – the world does not necessarily get more colourful, but I notice the colours, the way they interact, the values and hues and textures. Things as mundane as a leaf of ivy against a stone wall, which I've passed every afternoon for the last month and a half, inspire me to crack open the paints.
This wonder and fascination with the world takes you out of yourself and engages you in the moment; in doing so I firmly believe it is a route to happiness. Plenty of self-help gurus talk about 'living in the now' – what better way to let go of everything troubling you than to empty your mind to everything but capturing the sweep of a hillside against the clouds, or your cat lying in the sun, or the way that one tree in the boulevard grew crooked? For ten minutes at a time, nothing else matters; you are absorbed in the beauty of something outside yourself. I know my mood improves when I do a lot of drawing from life and I think this is why; awareness of the wonders of the world overrides the petty concerns gnawing away at me. It's like drugs, only you're improving your brain instead of frying it! And it costs nothing!
An interesting outgrowth of this preoccupation with drawing from life is the Sketchcrawl. Click the link – Enrico Casarosa explains it much better than I would (he invented it, after all) – but take it from me that after the first half hour or so of getting into it, a day spent Sketchcrawling is a fantastic day! You can do it with friends or on your own; you can do it on the official sketchcrawl days if a sense of community and sharing your day on the forum is appealing to you, or you could set a day aside and do it by yourself. (Going with a group of people makes it much harder to drop out, though!) It's a way to dive in the deep end and see what drawing from life can do for you.
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I'm one of the new people who ran across your 40 Days project and started following. Thanks for doing this - I've been in a very
lowlong (typo, but low works too) slump and I appreciate the inspiration.