Sooner or later — if you haven’t already done so — you will discover the great value of doing a series of drawings on a single theme. This is the best way I know to deepen your artistic vision. It will get you beyond self-conscious concerns about drawing skills and techniques. Think of it as moving beyond drawing things and on to drawing ideas. This is where art lives.
This chapter features a gallery of artists and the themes they have chosen. They are: Frank Bettendorf, Alan E. Cohen, Steve Cosentino, Dave Creek, R. Crumb, George Dugan, John Joline, Stephen Huneck, Elizabeth Layton, Maya Lin, Alex Pinkerson, & Omar Ruiz.
Self Portraits as a Theme
Exaggerate
and Distort
Most of us have strong fears about looking ugly orridiculous. It’s time to challenge those fears by deliberately drawing yourself in ways that you fear. This helps you get some separation between you and your work. It will free you up.and allow you to take risks. Robert Fritz, who has written extensively on creating, makes the strong point that, “You are not your work. If you think that you are your work, you can’t have a relationship with it. It takes two to have a relationship.” Here I’ve drawn myself in an exaggeratedly pensive mood, attacked by ants (I used a rubber stamp for the ants, and in a meditative moment.
Most of us have strong fears about looking ugly orridiculous. It’s time to challenge those fears by deliberately drawing yourself in ways that you fear. This helps you get some separation between you and your work. It will free you up.and allow you to take risks. Robert Fritz, who has written extensively on creating, makes the strong point that, “You are not your work. If you think that you are your work, you can’t have a relationship with it. It takes two to have a relationship.” Here I’ve drawn myself in an exaggeratedly pensive mood, attacked by ants (I used a rubber stamp for the ants, and in a meditative moment.
Use Images from Your Childhood
Old photographs of yourself — particularly those taken of you as a child — offer rich possibilities for drawing. The snapshots from my own childhood are often grainy and out of focus. I like to capture this quality in my drawings. I also like to dramatize these photos by turning them into movie posters. I give them titles, using the type faces from the posters of the 1930s and 1940s. In some way this captures the larger than life fantasy world that I lived in for much of my childhood. That’s me as the indian.
