Thursday, September 08, 2011

Son Of Discarded Portfolio Drawings Part Eighty Seven

Here's another discarded portfolio drawing that I had laying around. It didn't last long in the portfolio because of multiple reasons, the main one being that it was only there to serve the purpose of having more humans in it. My portfolio got a little too top heavy with cutesy animal characters and I was looking to balance it. This drawing got the boot a year after initially adding it. It's not that I thought there was anything wrong with it; just that I had things that I thought presented me a little better. I used to be very careful about letting people see work that I thought was below par or just not up there with my best. I don't worry about that anymore because even with drawings that you like very much, there's always going to be someone thinking that your work is not inventive, thoughtful, sincere, stimulating, subtle, organic, animated, etc (you get the idea).
Once you reach a certain degree of experience, even the drawings that are not so great by your standards, may exhibit a quality that you may gloss over all together. Sometimes those quick simple little sketches exhibit a whole lot about your abilities as an artist.
A quick story....Years after I went to school for animation and fine art, I took a life drawing class with a famous artist in NYC. In sketching out my first 20 minute pose, I was a little embarrassed by the drawing and wasn't in the mood to have my instructor critique the work. But as he walked behind me, he took a quick look at my drawing and exclaimed the following....
"Ahhh, a professional!" It was quite a good feeling to hear that, although it didn't make me feel any different about the sketch.. It did give me a certain confidence to know that even my half baked attempts at a good drawing are going to be tempered with an ounce of professionalism.

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