Maggie's Artwork

Hummingbird

Drawing Challenge Day 2 – Draw a bird

This was my second attempt at drawing a hummingbird as part of my first 30-day drawing challenge. I never thought I had any talent for drawing “real life” things. With abstract art, no one can possibly say what your shapes were supposed to look like. Realism is not so forgiving. If your proportions or perspective are off, the mistake will be glaring and cringe-inducing, right? So why even try unless you’re willing to put in thousands of hours learning the craft? Well, that’s what challenges are for – taking absurd risks!

Micron pens in Rhodia notepad, 2017. Margaret Trias.

So, I was incredibly surprised that I was able to free-hand draw decent looking hummingbird after only one false start. This is undoubtedly a hummingbird. The head might be misshapen, the body a little wobbly, and there are some questionable choices in shading here and there. But you know what? I think it has style. I love that outstretched wing, and even the feathers. Who knows if hummingbird wings look anything like that? Unless you’re an avid birder, you’d probably have to look it up. But that isn’t the point. The point is that I’ve conveyed my idea. My idea of a tiny weightless bird, his outstretched wings, and the magic of being able to stop time and look at a hummingbird in mid-flight: something that isn’t even possible in reality. I like it.

I wish I could show you more of my process here, including my first attempt. But I just can’t bring myself to post it on this so-far elegant looking blog. Ugh! That’s how terrible it was. My mistake was following one of those step-by-step tutorials for how to draw a bird, one line at a time. Do those sorts of things ever work for anyone? You end up a slave to someone else’s lines and woe betide anyone who dares stray from the exact curve as illustrated. It looks so easy! And yet, you will fail, miserably. I don’t know. I’m not giving up on learning via tutorials – the internet is so full of them, there’s gotta be something to it.

OK, fine. I’ll post my first attempt. I really do want to lay it all out there on this blog, for any other aspiring artists out there. See? This is how bad it was. If this is where you’re at, there’s hope! It won’t be like this forever, I promise.

So how did I move beyond this? I did a google image search for “hummingbird” just to get the idea of a hummingbird more solidly at the forefront of my mind. The image I used for inspiration was this one: https://fineartamerica.com/featured/hummingbird-kyle-peron.html

I mainly used this image for ideas about shading (darken the back wing and under the neck and back) and shape of the tail. But beyond that, I just let my own lines flow where my mind’s eye guided them. Ah…. So much better!

So there’s still enormous room for improvement, but I’m going to keep moving through the challenge and hopefully come back to drawing birds many many more times.

Zentangle grid

This became a grid for experimenting with various zen tangles, even if that wasn’t what I set out to do. I have mixed feelings about zen tangles, especially the kind where you’re copying a form that someone else has already invented, with maybe only slight variations. One could say “that’s not art, that is just a form of meditation”. Not that there’s anything wrong with meditation, but it isn’t serious work. The ease with which you can create something beautiful, even if your hand is wobbly and don’t have an eye for perspective, and you have no artistic training whatsoever, seems like cheating, right? It does.

And yet, I learned so many things from this exercise that I plan to continue down this path as long as it leads. If someone wants to call my lines “zentangles” I won’t be offended, especially if I’m inventing new ones. If my contribution to the world is only to create templates for stress-relieving exercises for others, that would be wonderful!

The main thing I learned from my explorations is to relax. Drawing has been giving me wrist pain, and I know that I tend to have a death grip on my pens. For no particular reason. I also tend to work hunched over. (For that, I will probably need to invest in a better desk situation). And I discovered that I don’t breathe when trying to draw very straight lines. Yikes! Not breathing is pretty antithetical to meditation (or, you know, life). So I’m working on all of these things. Even if I never become a real artist, this project may open me up to whatever the next chapter in my life is. Hopefully it will include things of beauty and deep breaths…

I drafted up a 30-day challenge for myself which includes learning how to draw some “real life” things (birds, ships, archaic scientific instruments, etc) and learning some art-related skills (scalable vector graphics, making a pinterest pin, learning processing.js) and then doing some drawing drills. On the side, I also planned to audit a (free) online art course. I may post the full 30-day list once I’ve worked through it a bit more. It’s very good to have some kind of structure, especially when caring for an infant at home means free time for drawing is brief and needs to be used wisely.

One thing I’ve noticed is that it’s pretty obvious when I’m in a learning mode. I sometimes worry, with drawing. If my lines are not very good (because I’m just starting out) and I’m not learning, then I would be purely wasting time. That thought fills me with dread. When the dread evaporates because I’m taking a big risk, or walking an avenue I’ve never been down, or refusing to fall back on old habits, I know that what I am doing has value. That is a sign that I’m in learning mode. Therefore, that sense of dread is not something to be ignored, to push aside. It’s a sign that you’ve stagnated a bit, and need to push forward.

Odd story. Over Thanksgiving I decided that I needed to learn how to play connect four. I don’t mean the rules for the game, I mean how to not lose so spectacularly. A few years ago I played against someone (I only vaguely remember who) and lost a half a dozen games in a row in a way that left me stunned and embarrassed and perplexed. How is it that I wasn’t seeing my opponent setting up for a win, every time? I’m so used to being good at visual stuff, I assumed that those three-in-a-row runs would just pop out at me from the board without having to look. I know, it seems absurd, but I kept not learning, and not trying to learn, like I was in a state of frustrated and mortified paralysis. This is also uncharacteristic for me, right? Don’t I have a masters degree in physics or something? Jeeze. Learning feels awesome. Not learning feels terrible, so why was I stuck there?

So I downloaded a connect four game onto my phone. I like to battle with my inner demons alone, thank you very much. It took more than a dozen games before I broke through whatever weird barrier I had in my head and started to piece together what my algorithmic opponent was trying to do and some basic strategies for blocking and setting up wins. What did breaking through the barrier feel like? It felt like acceptance. I had to accept that I sucked at this game. Not because I’m stupid, but because for so long I’ve stubbornly assumed that the game was so easy that it shouldn’t require any thought. But it does. It’s amazing how many aspects of life can be improved with the application of just a little more thought. It’s a powerful thing!

This is an extreme example of being stuck in a vortex of blocked learning, frustration, shame, etc. But I think it illustrates that to a lesser degree, we all probably have areas of life that we avoid, or that we almost purposefully perform terribly, for fear of confronting how much there is to learn. It’s too bad, because if we could work on unlocking the things we fear the most, the worlds that would open up would be the most beautiful and filled with potential.

Here’s my take-away: It’s better to feel exhausted and torn apart but utterly free to explore everything that life has to offer, than it is to feel safe and settled and have to walk a narrow path wearing blinders to avoid an accidental glance at a terrifying sight. Embrace your fears!

Inspiration videos that I used for this drawing:

Vaguely Floral

How do you know when you’re done? I started out with this abstract pattern, and I really like it. From a distance especially, I love how you can see either overlapping circles, or star shapes, or maybe diagonal crossing lines. The ambiguity is pleasing to me. But I was also curious to know what would happen if I kept going? Who’s to say when a piece is ever finished?

So I had to scan the “in progress” version, knowing that I would never know until I’d ruined it, whether it was truly done. Here’s the final version:

What do you think? It’s now more difficult to see those neat overlapping circles. I can’t complain about a bit of color either. I’m seeing flames, flowers, some other things. I am satisfied enough.

Sea Life

Here’s an oddity. I started drawing this one over a year ago, and abandoned it. I picked it up again some time last week. It’s taken me days and days to finish everything. I’m pleased with some elements, but there are also mistakes that I wasn’t able to integrate.

Micron ink on Rhodia paper. 2016 – 2017. Margaret Trias.

Adventures two dimensions

This unfinished epic drawing still sort of blows my mind (another late 2016). I undertook a very daunting 9 x 12 inch blank page and somehow just kept going with it for hours, and maybe days? I don’t quite remember. It was incredibly satisfying, but the more I added, the more scared I got that my next idea would suck, so eventually I had to quit while I was ahead. Still, I love this piece because in it I can see a lot of potential, the fact that my brain is indeed filled with ideas without end. And yes, some of them will suck.

Micron pen and marker on Bristol white paper. 2016. Margaret Trias

While I do love this sprawling style, I’m going to focus on smaller pieces with a more coherent pattern for now, just for the sake of getting into a sustainable and productive rhythm and not burn myself out.