Recently I was reading The Notebook: A History of Thinking on Paper (affiliate link) and in one of the chapters, an artist quotes his art teacher. “When you’re drawing a nose, for Christ’s sake don’t draw a nose. Just draw what you see. And after half an hour, you step away, and there will be a nose.”
In the Ioana Pioaru course I am working through, she reminds us of something similar as we started working through the second flower.
I have found this to be true – if you try to draw a flower or a nose the way you think it looks you will end up drawing the way children generally draw or the way some folk art is done intentionally.
I was out in the woods snowmobiling and we stopped at a warming hut off one of the trails. The snow was thick in the trees (well, everywhere!) I had never experienced that amount of snow in my life!
I stayed outside for a little bit, just walking around, looking up at the trees and the heavy branches, laden with snow. And, suddenly, the way I saw the branches above me changed.
The branches and there were shapes, half circles, arcs, curves. It was a really crazy feeling and moment.
I took pictures of what I saw, hoping that I would get the right angle to capture what I was seeing. For me, at least, the second picture definitely does.
