Tuesday, March 13, 2007

Not everything has to be perfect

After studying drawing with the book Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, it was time to do to the "final" self-portrait.

I've spent many many hours struggling with this drawing, spread out over many days. Perhaps knowing that I would post it for the world to see caused me to be hyper-critical of myself. I finished it this afternoon, took one look at it, and got depressed. It was just awful. Looked nothing like me. Barely looked human. After feeling sorry for myself for a couple of hours, I went back and fixed it.

Hm. Still doesn't look like me. But you know what? I really don't want to fix it anymore. And I don't want to start over. I know it's not perfect. My central axis is out of alignment with my eye-line, causing my face to look lopsided. My eyes are not drawn from the same perspective. The shape of my face is too long, causing all my features to be spread out.

I could nit-pick it all day long. But you know, there's a lot right with it too. Is that not the best drawing of an ear you've ever seen? If you have never seen me, take my word for it - that looks exactly like my ear. My eyes might not match each other, but they look pretty close to what my eyes really look like - granted, from two different angles. My lips are pretty close. And it's way better than my preliminary pre-course self-portrait.

So, loving friends and family, you don't need to make me feel better with comments such as "it's very nice, but you're much prettier in real life", or "hey, it's way better than I could do." I do appreciate your support. I really do. But I'm proud of myself already, even though it's not perfect.

I'll keep practicing, and maybe I'll draw a perfect one another day.

Self-portrait: A before and after comparison




Raw food dish of the week - Garden Vegetable Soup

Ick. Not good. Edible, for the most part. I don't seem to have much luck with raw soups.

Ingredients: zucchini, tomatoes, celery, green onions, spinach, avocado, fresh basil leaves, red bell pepper, lemon juice, sea salt, cayenne.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

WOW, you're gay.

Eleni Binge said...

That anonymous person sounds very, very familiar. The first letter of his name rhymes with 'gay' in fact.

In this pic you actually look strikingly similar to a friend of mine from highschool, lexi. But seriously, this is pretty damned good. I know what you mean, about it being hard to capture the essence of someone. That's a tricky thing. Sometimes the drawing can be off, technically, but you can still get that look that makes it them. I can see that a little here - some sort of hesitation was captured in one of the drawings.
Dr. binge over and out.