Something about doubt and drawing

I've  had a bad week or so. It has been up and down. But I want to talk to you about drawing, more importantly what's going on in my head as I draw. 

Today I got back to my sketchbook work. I need to improve. The core element to help an artist to improve is drawing from observation. My mirror kept falling over, and I do have access to a willing model. The next best thing was the internet. So I have used the work of Peter Hapak and his photo of Wallace Shawn for TIME magazine ( "Pack Your (Book) Bag," July 11, 2011 issue.) 

Here's the image

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Wallace Shawn by Peter Hapak for TIME  From "Pack Your (Book) Bag," July 11, 2011 issue.

You may recognise him from 'The Princess Bride' and his voice from Rex in Toy Story. I love his face here. 
My humble attempts to copy the photo are below. I'm not going to talk about the flaws in the drawings more about the thoughts that ran through my mind when I was drawing it.

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This was about 2 and a 1/2 hours.

After I put my kids to bed I logged another 1/2 hour. This is about as good as I can get it. To be honest I prefered it before I put another 1/2 hour into it.

When drawing I have the same thoughts, first it starts with ' I wonder what x will think of this drawing? Will they like it..will they...FOCUS.' I have to think about things like 'This line is roughly twice that and this angle is roughly 20 degrees..' and other such technical thoughts. Then comes the wave of :
' I'll never be as good as those hyperrealistic artists, why am I bothering.'
' This isn't even your style Cathal you're more semi abstract, so why are you bothering.'
 'It's as good as you can get it. Stop.'
'You can't draw like this, stop.'
' Shut up brain. Working here.'
5 minutes later the doubt cycle kicks in again. I keep resisting the doubt and fail voice because I care and I want to get better at this. 
I know that voice is the voice of fear. Fear I'll fail. Fear I'll get laughed at. Fear of pushing myself. 

Well I'm pushing myself because I care, I'm aiming to improve I'll only fail if stop trying to improve. As long as I try I'll improve slowly or quickly, but I'll improve. Laughed at well I've been laughed at lots.(usually because I look ridiculous.) And as Adam Ant sung,  
'Prince Charming
Ridicule is nothing to be scared of,'

I'm no Prince and my charms are questionable, but I agree 'Ridicule is nothing to be scared of,'

something about artists as censors

Wait a.. Whut? Two things yes I have managed to get back here with ina week and that head line. Artists as Censors. Well let me explain. This is where my head has been at since I seem to be on the other side of the whole fun depression/anxiety fest I was having.

Artists are censors. (Watch out for incoming science that I will probably get wrong.) Our experience of the world is really odd when you sit and think about it. Using all of our senses we soak up oceans of information. We process around 34 GIGABYTES of information a day through our social media usage and general informational noise. In a 2 hour face to face conversation we will pretty much equal our daily media diet.  Recent research suggests we can absorb 2.5 petabytes of data.  Here's the thing though. We don't use all this information. Our brain and consciousness (what ever that is) filter the information. So at any one time we are receiving just the information we need to complete a task ( or as our brains were programmed to do survive)
 

This iswhere my brain starts to boil. Oh i get the general drift of the science, but the intricacies seem to branch off into philosophy and questions about the very fabric and nature of reality very quickly. And if you know me you'll know I love those rabbit holes too much. 

So we can accept that the brain filters out 'non essential' information to allow us to function. This means or strongly suggests that my experience of the world is due to a set of filters different to your set of filters. But why artists as censors. As artists and indeed any one working in any creative field, or anyone trying to communicate to some one else, wechannel our ideas, sculpt them to fit the window we wish to show the world. To do this it is necessary to act as a censor. To actively filter out the information that distracts from or clutters our ideas.

As artists we censor our view of reality to construct a new view point that will have to work it's way through the filters of relevance in the minds of our audience.

That brings me on to my thoughts about meaning and semantics. But I'll leave those as thoughts and ideas unfiltered for you consumption, brewing in my little hairy Irish noggin.
 

Stay safe, take risks and watch out for stray syntax.

Afterword(s)
If my very genralised reading of the science here is questionable please let me know and fill me in. Either with a stern talking to, or by providing some friendly and easily digestiblelinks, preferably audio, (not video, I'm usually in the cave painting or looking after kids or just relaxing with the Milky one, so video does not get watched) Geez I'm demanding. Podcasts are ace!
 

Something over due

I'm well past an update on what I've been doing recently. My work is falling into what I consider to be 3 distinct areas :

1. Glitched work.

This involves using multiple exposures, apps on my phone like Decim8, Audacity and Photoshop.

The work produced is mainly photographic, and tries to give a sense of a memory of a space moved though and seen from many angles, whilst revealing the 'coded' nature of these memories.

Landlocked and Sunblinded

If this needs clarifying ask me what the hell I'm on about.

2. Self portraiture.  Due to a lot of factors, the main one I work out of my garage and don't leave there unless the kids are bleeding or hungry.  The net result is I see me a lot and hang out too much in my head. With the portraits I'm trying to express the emotions and mind states I'm feeling. The works feel self referential to me. Me expressing my mind state in paint to me.

Pattern Recognition

3. Text based work. I'm loath to call the work typographical as that implies the art of letter design. My work with the text is about flows of consciousness and word play. In the main each word really references and springboards off the previous. I create syntactically correct phrases, where the semantics break down past the word level. The inspiration comes from the 'myth of the book' and from Paul Klee's 'Open Book'.

Pox 167.

These various strands overlap, and currently I'm trying to find a way to link them together in a way that is both visually and conceptually pleasing to me.

Something about structure and coping.

So I was all revved up and raringto go. Prepared to show the world my tiger face (which incidentally Logjammer assures me looks like a sausage face) and shred my procrastination and lack of mostly everything, with my sausage clawed paws.
And then I imploded, like anineffectualsausage. ( I don't get the simile either.) The net result was I got anxious about not fulfilling my commitments, and then felt guilty for wanting to put time into these commitments while all around, the house work and kids clamored for attention. 

Recently I was given a task as part of my anxiety/depression therapy. It is a simple task and for me surprisingly effective. I basically make a list of my commitments and wants for the week. I prioritise theminto 1, 2 and 3. With 1 being the highest priority and 3 being a bonus that would be nice type class. I selected 3 things to prioritise on each day. 1 of these things should be for me. In my case that's making guilt free time for my art and whatever else. Yadda yadda ya. If you want more information on this you can ask, but I'm not going to write any more about it here.