The one about Fear Walking. What I learned on this one Waterloo St Sketchwalk.
This is a sketch I did during a sketch walk to Waterloo Street, its a street full of activities, because it’s where worshippers come to the Sri Krishnan Hindu temple and a Buddhist temple that resides side by side on this street. The buddhist temple is one in honour of the goddess of mercy, its called Kwan Im Thong Hood Cho temple and the lovely thing about these two temples is what is known as cross worshipping. You really see multi culture in action when you see devotees go to worship in both temples.
The sketchbook I use is Etchr The Perfect Sketchbook, Cold press portrait, which I’ve been loving for double spread watercolor urban sketching.I decided to focus on a scene of a street healer, who built his little practice out of a few large umbrellas and sign posts with lots of his posters and medical diagrams. There were a few people there, the ‘doctor’ or the ’sensei’ as some would call him, and a patient, and two others waiting in the wings for their turn.
Before I started my explanation, let me tell you first that at no point in the start of this sketch, through most of the way through my sketch do I feel secure, confident about how it’s going to turn out. Oh no! I had many thoughts swirling around and most of it is sounding like doubts. Lots of doubts! Here’s some examples of the thoughts; “ do I use a pencil first, but that’s just weak!, but if I start with a pen, what if I messed up the proportions? The paper is too nice for a bad start. But I’ve done and start with a pen directly, it went okay, what’s the problem? Yes I’ll start with a pen, omg, omg, quick before they moved away. “, and it goes like this for a while longer.
Does this sound familiar to you?
I have written about how Drawing is actually a Seeing Skill, and this exact unsettling feeling is what I am trying to explain to you now.
The way I choose to start this sketch is finally to use a pencil, and through this process, I decided to accept that it feels a little too safe, but I also plan not to draw everything in pencil first, because that would be absolutely no fun and not challenging. The point of a sketch is always to find out what can I do, learn and do better? I feel like I have the courage to try something new, so I decided to do what psychologist Susan David wrote about courage, that it’s not the absence of fear, but courage is fear walking. So I ‘fear-walked’ my way through the sketch of the people, really rough, and quickly moved to the fude pen. The whole sketch was not planned out at this point, I was hoping that the composition would workout and that the size of the people would anchor the rest of the sketch, and hope that at least one of the umbrellas would fit in the paper. In any case, please note that this way of doing a sketch feels really new to me, I am usually erring on either going big and go full direct pen only, or pencil first and stayed safe. Today, I had the guts to let the process be mixed and uncertain, slowly letting the sketch develop without knowing if the whole thing will fit, let alone look good.
I then added extra courage, and quickly moved into colouring the people, and as I go along, I moved back and forth between the pen, the pencil and the watercolour, unfolding the sketch bit by bit. Guess what? It worked out, I am so happy. When did I feel this satisfaction? At the point I started painting the darkest dark of the inside of the inner tent where a big color contrast is needed. I didn’t know how to do all that inside tent’ details, so I kept using the same grey, layers of it. There were a lot of things in there, but nothing in there felt really significant or important to be drawn in details.
As I unfold this sketch, I also realised, I really didn’t need to finish it to the edge, which I’ve carefully taped to preserve my white border. In the end, I didn’t need the tapes at all. Hurray!
Goal reached 1. Painting on location and purposely unfinished the sketch, and have a strong focal point.
Goal reached 2: Adding a dark that’s not flimsy and shy, adding a dark grey that is bold and gutsy.
And tomorrow I’ll forget I’ve done this and gonna make my way though the next drawing as if I’ve never done it before, and continue some more fear walking. I think this is how I get to build some courage.
What I learned is that I must trust myself a bit more, like a really really bit more trust. And do more of the same type of process drawing because I am curious, how will I do it the next time?
Lessons to take if you feel me:
Keep curiously fear walking through each sketch, use the best sketchbooks, make those bold marks, and when you’re not feeling it, that’s okay too, do more of you that you like the feeling of, and less of you that your brain sometimes cannot help to do.
Susan