Danny Gregory wants to get his drawing back in touch with his life again:
I have lost touch with the most important thing to me, my life as I live it. Not my life as it is ornamented and sugar crusted but the plain old eat-some-cereal, smell-the-tubeorse, watch-the-dog-sunbathe life that I actually lead. The life that isn’t destined for some other purpose or audience or analysis but just is. The authentic life that starts each day with an emptying bladder and wraps it up with a stretch of floss.
It’s not just me. It’s easy for anyone to get caught up with the enthusiasm for this drawing stuff to get overly involved in drawing prompts, in posting to a blog, to shopping for art supplies, taking classes, and planning sketchcrawls, and to forget the most important thing, the true purpose of it all. To draw what you live so you will live it more deeply.
Life without drawing is bad.
And drawing without life is bad too.
I am going to go out and have that tattooed on me somewhere prominent. But first, let me do some research into tattooing, pick a type face, plan out a color palette, comparison-shop pain killers…
It is so easy to get caught up in the stuff of life, the busy-ness, the bloggy-ness. I spend a lot of my time reading blogs, sometimes as escape but mostly because I find what others have to say so fascinating. But, I spend a lot of time simply living, too. Not that being and existing is very respected in a country where everyone’s second question after your name is, “And what do you do?”
Next to my computer here is a little penguin who gives me his perspective on life:
“I do nothing in particular, but I do it very well!” — W.S. Gilbert
Life is just too short to get so busy and caught up in important stuff to do that you stop actually living. Sometimes, you just have to breathe. And then you can draw. And paint. And create. But only if those things are adding something to your life in the process. If they aren’t it may be time for a breather.
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