I have had a lot of people ask me how long I have been drawing. And recently I have been asked a few times more than usual. It could be that I am drawing even more lately. Been feeling the love to do it in free times, getting inspired through films, comics, books, photographs and random ideas.
In our Drawing class with Michael Collins I have been working on a series of ten paintings with ink wash, based on a comic retro theme labelled 'The Stalking Samurai' about a 1950s woman who is stalked on the street by a mysterious shadowy samurai. Then she escapes to a cafe but realises the samurai is still stalking her. Right now I am working on the scene in her bathroom as she emerges out of the bath tub. Care has been taken care that she looks hot, because she is hardly covered and her legs and back need to look good. Inspiration from film voyeurism (where the idea is to show off the woman's body to attract more attention to the story, which works obviously as seen in Bollywood movie Bobby). It is not pornographic so its alright.
Michael has been highly impressed with the paintings and last week as I was working on the third painting, he said, "You have done in three hours what my third year Fine Arts students cannot do in half a year." Because apparently one of his students was trying to finish a comic novel but hardly got anywhere because he was trying too hard to make the characters real and all that. (It actually is all in the head. No matter how much paper work you do, if the characters aren't real to you inside your head, they just aren't real.) But that was an awesome comment to get from a drawing teacher and one of my favourite teachers at that.
Then yesterday as I was brushing up my sixth or seventh painting, he came and looked at it and said she will call Janet Abbot (the head of department of Fine Arts department) and let her have a look.
Golly! I thought.
Janet looked at them with her fingers on her chin. She nodded. Then asked, "How long have you been drawing?"
"As long as I can remember."
"Ah. That's the way it should be, good."
She thought she would put the paintings up somewhere in the college. But she didn't in the end, thank goodness. Because after the submissions are done and my marks are received I plan to sell them (ten paintings in all as a series of paintings) and make some money. haha
And coincidentally Debbie asked me, "how long have you been drawing?", yesterday. And I gave her history of how I drew everywhere, on my uncle's bike, uncle's cupboards, drawers and so on.
So yeah, I don't think that drawing is any talent I have. Of course maybe I have an eye for creativity and ideas, but the ability to draw I was not born with. It is not logical. Afters about 18 years of slaving away, spending afternoons and nights drawing away, painting away, looking at books with beautiful drawings, I have come to where I have been. Nothing is acheived when nothing is done.
That gives me more reason to keep drawing. Else one day I'd be saying, "when I was younger I used to draw SO MUCH. Then I got busy and sort of stopped."
Acquired gifts take time but do wear off. And it is a gift, not a birthright. I can lose it.
Ben Ning, Creative Practitioner