Sans Fig Leaf

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"Illumination in shades of grey"

24 May, 2001

Although the word "artist" appears on my business card, I've always known it wasn't true. Yes, I've created hundreds illustrations for various technical manuals over the years. And yes, I've designed covers and discs and labels and books of many shapes and kinds. My employers have always been satisfied with my work--enough to keep paying me and keep giving me more work to do, at any rate.

But it's never felt as if I was doing real art. I'm not a real illustrator--I simply render illustrations on the computer. My designs are adequate, but there's no sizzle. Admittedly, in the world of technical documentation for computer software and hardware, there isn't much room for pizzazz. Usability is the primary goal. Making it look nice is always considered a luxury.

There's a part of me that has always believed that I simply don't have the talent. Graphics and design have been at least a part of most of the jobs I've had for an awfully long time, so if there was a fabulous talent there, you'd think it would have manifested by now.

That didn't stop me from enrolling in the School of Visual Concepts. Maybe everything I've accomplished in the art side of my work has been all skill. If that's the case, learning new skills can't hurt. That was my reasoning, anyway.

So I've begun with a drawing class. Once a week, I meet with a bunch of others in a room high above one of the main commuting arterials. Our teacher, an accomplished artist, sets us with a task, gives us feedback as we draw for a few hours, then assigns some drawings to do as homework. I expected to sharpen my drawing skills a little bit and get in the habit of completing class work. If that was all I got from the class, I would have considered it a success.

I hadn't expected epiphanies.

It began with our fifth homework assignment. This was a little different. He wanted us to spend at least three hours over two weeks on a single drawing. We could choose any subject, so long as there were areas of shadow and brightness. It was to be rendered in graphite or charcoal. He wanted to see our unfinished piece mid-way through, then the final.

I had discovered with earlier assignments that what works best for me is to draw two or more quick pictures trying different angles and compositions before jumping into the real drawing. So I spent a half hour each on two drawings of my chosen subject -- a teapot I owned which was similar to one that had been in one of the still lifes at class. Many of us had had difficulty drawing the teapot, so I wanted to figure out what I had done wrong. I wasn't happy with either of my preliminary drawings, and Michael heard me grumbling under my breath. When he asked me what was wrong, I told him they looked awful. That I wasn't getting anywhere with this.

He told me I sounded just like a friend of ours who is constantly disparaging his artwork whenever one of us tells him we like his work. So I buckled down and tried again.

And something unexpected happened. I fell into the picture. I don't know how else to describe it. I stopped thinking about anything but the shapes and shadows and highlights in front of me. The dozens of trains of thought that normally run through my head--the "voices" that constantly comment on everything--all fell silent. It was like I stopped thinking and just acted without thought. My hands moved, my eyes looked from the teapot to the paper.

Then, suddenly, thinking resumed. I looked up and was surprised to see that an hour had passed. I was even more surprised to find that I was sweating profusely.

I stared at the picture. I was finished. It's not going to go in any museum anywhere, but it was a significant improvement over the earlier peices. I told Michael that I'd produced something "less awful" and I went to bed.

At class, my teacher agreed that the drawing was a significant improvement over the first two. Then he told me some things I might try to work on to make the final peice even better still. I don't remember everything he said, because that night, he had us all start drawing right away, and he was coming around to us individually to discuss our homework--but I had fallen into the picture again. When the end of class rolled around, it was a complete shock to me. It hadn't felt like three hours. I had tuned out the rest of the world-- all the little side conversations, other students moving around to look at the subject from different angles--and just drew. We were doing a two-week drawing in class, so we had to hang the peices on the wall and leave them to finish the next week.

When I came back to the homework, it happened immediately. As soon as I was ready to draw, that switch in my head flipped, and I was drawing. The only thing I had remembered from the teacher's comments was that I relied too heavily on lines and tricks of perspective. My shading and highlights didn't look real, but the outline was convincing enough to make the viewer miss that. So when I went back for my final drawing of my teapot, I set myself the goal of not drawing the teapot. I would reproduce the shadows and highlights and shapes of the various parts of the drawing, without drawing the outlines first.

I think it worked. My teacher and classmates had some nice things to say about it, and for the first time I didn't feel they were just being nice.

The epiphany came while I was looking at the final product and at the other drawings the other students had done.

When the thought processes in my head fall silent, it's not that I have stopped thinking, I've just stopped verbalizing my thoughts. I've always been such a verbal person, my language skills are so strong, that it is almost impossible for me to imagine having thoughts which can't be expressed verbally.

In the interplay of graphite on paper, as I created shades of gray in shapes that added up to a simple teapot, I let that part of my mind express itself without words.

Just as the shadows and highlights work together to define a shape, words and images and sensations and feelings work together to define us.