Andrea Potzlers Vor-Allem-Bücher-Seite

Schlagwort: Sketching

Sketching a tree today

I still have a bit of a weird feeling towards drawing trees, but I decided that it cannot be any more difficult to draw a tree than to draw anything else in the world.

After all it is my favourite weather at the moment and Josef and I have built a heap of snow with the tractor. We call it the Kirchmatterhorn 2017. We also enjoyed the sun with Bavarian curling yesterday.

I totally enjoy trying new materials. This is my Strathmore Toned Gray sketchbook and coloured pencils. I enjoy my Caran d’Ache Pablos for their brightness, but also the Faber Castell pencils (Albrecht Dürer and Polychromos) are great to work with. Lamy has this series of kids pencils that are also astonishingly smooth and bright. I don’t know about their lightfastness, though. I know the other artists pens I mention have been tested for that and seem to keep well.

 

how_to_tree1.jpeg

 

Sketching the beginnings

I remember that day when I was eight years old my class was sitting in the schoolyard and we were supposed to draw a tree that was right in front of us. I did and I surely enjoyed it since I have not met a kid so far who does not enjoy drawing. My arts teacher came over and looking on my paper, said: „This is not what a tree looks like!“

Somehow, weird enough, that comment stopped me from drawing. It sticks to my mind until now that I am nearly thirty years older.  One little exclamation took all the fun out and I felt bad and weak and stopped drawing after that.

But when I went on a big trip for twenty months in 2008, I spent my time thinking about so many prejudices, comments and habits that had taken over my life. That I cannot draw was one of them. Working on a farm in hot Australia in a rather remote place near Bundaberg, I bought myself a sketchbook and got a pencil and started drawing again. I drew every afternoon for as long as I wanted, sometimes I drew for hours forgetting everything else.

Since then, I have not stopped. I draw the everyday, I take classes online, I have met wonderful people through my habit of drawing in sketchbooks. Oh no, I am not a master now and there are so many things I would like to improve on. But will not being perfect stop me again from doing something I enjoy? Definitely not. I do draw and through drawing my life seems to pass slower and somehow the little things that I see mean more to me. It is a trap not to show the drawings out of shame I might not be good enough. Exactly the same trap that my teacher set so many years ago.  It is not about being great or being better than others, it is about where I stand with my perspective.

On this page I want to share that passion and my personal view on life.

My first drawing in Australia

My first drawing after thirty years, on cheap paper, with a way to hard pencil. Boy, did I enjoy starting these little exercises!

 

 

 

 

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