On Monday night I took part in an Etsy Labs Craft Night. It was a mini drawing workshop with Carla Sonheim. I was so impressed and excited with what I learned that night, that I signed up for her two and a half hour workshop the following evening: The Art of Silliness. The biggest lesson that Carla imparts is: “We used to love drawing when we were kids, before our inner critic kicked in. Stop trying to draw ‘perfectly’ and just have fun with it.” (my paraphrasing of her class) What’s funny is, when you embrace that idea, when you stop trying so hard to do it “right” you get amazing results. Results you actually LIKE!
I used to draw all the time as a kid. In second grade, I wrote AND illustrated my first book. Even in high school, after I finished taking tests, I would highly decorate my cover paper. But somewhere along the way, I started worrying about how good my drawings were. I started saying things like, “Well her nose doesn’t really look like that. I screwed up.” I quit having fun.
What’s funny is that in reality, I’m actually a pretty decent realistic artist. When I took a drawing class in college, I turned out some good work. But those pieces take hours, sometimes even days, to create. For some reason, I held myself to this weird standard, that my quick, fun drawings of people and things, should look as “right” as the ones done for hours at the easel.
Anyway, here is some of my work from the class this week, taken quickly with my cell phone.
The rabbit is my favorite one 🙂 Anyway, here’s what I’ve come up with: I want to keep drawing for fun, drawing just to be drawing, but I live in a one bedroom apartment with one other person and a cat. In other words, I don’t have a lot of room. So I’ve decided that anything I make that isn’t just in my sketch book, any piece that looks nice enough to actually display, I’m going to sell on Etsy, but only for like $1 or 2. Seriously. Mainly just enough to cover shipping. I think it’s a great way for friends and family to get some Kerr made art (see what I did there?) AND to keep my apartment from becoming too cluttered. I’ll keep you all up to date as to when I add stuff.
OH! And if there’s anything that you’d like me to draw, just drop me a line and I’ll see what I can do.
Cur Made 