Recording progress...

Folks, now is confession time!

What I started off with great pomp and show in one of my blog posts a while back (see here), has not progressed as well as I had promised myself. It has been more than a month since I first sketched and today my count remains at a measly four, which is quite an awful total given the fact that I've had ample free time at my disposal.

I have sat through some extremely lame and lousy Rakhi ka Swayamvar (an Indian version of Rock of Love and other ridiculous Bachelor and Bachelorette reality shows) episodes, wiled away my precious time reading John Grisham (not that he is a bad author, but then not the best to spend my wide-awake creative hours on), engaged in day dreaming, and spent extra hours surfing news sites even though all give the same "breaking" news! All this when I could have invested serious hours in upgrading my drawing and sketching skills. I am hoping a public self-admonition works.

Okay, so here's a status update. After my first sketch of a rural landscape (see here), I did another one - somewhat similar. I personally love the way you can play around with the oft-used "hut". As a subject, it offers great depth and is a more visually appealing sight compared to the concrete jungles we city slickers dwell in.

Here it is:

I came across this really beautiful picture of a devastated tree (yes, I get the irony there but it was not intended), devastated by lightning perhaps. The sketch does not come very close to reality, but perhaps provides a different angle (quite literally) to the traditional depictions of a tree.

Sketching the human face is, ofcourse, an artist's envy. I cannot sketch a person, simply by observing him or her, and don't even think I'll ever be able to do that. Nevertheless, I tried copying from a picture. The front view is the most difficult to get, and yes, I screwed it up.

With that, I have pretty much given up on frontal views for the time being.

In the process of creating the following sketch, I figured out that side profiles are easier to depict as symmetry ceases to be an issue. You don't have to worry about the alignment of the eyes, the nostrils (I mean it) etc etc. I could have got this one better had I been a little more patient with the initial drawing (please ignore the nose, it wasn't meant to be like this). This is the one thing about sketching, if the initial drawing is not well proportioned, however well you sketch, the effect is dampened. Oh Lord, I only learn lessons, never get to implement them.

Freud said, "From error to error, one discovers the entire truth", and so I hope it shall be. Amen.