Hi! This is my fourth In-depth post of my 2021 digital art project.
Progress Report
Over the past couple of weeks, I have been experimenting with some new drawing ideas. For example, I played around with drawing some animals, human characters, and even a few specific facial features (eyes, for example). As well, I have been conducting a small amount of research on art projects. With more time and practice, I will narrow down my options to decide on an art project to invest a significant amount of time into. At the moment, my options remain pretty wide open.
I met with my mentor, Xylia, online this week for our check-in. It was a quick, lunchtime meeting that served mostly to see where I was at and to plan to implement my goals in the near future. Even if we don’t necessarily accomplish something tangible in a mentor meeting, I believe that it is important to have a quick chat about next steps so we don’t fall behind.
I have set a couple small, personal goals for the next meetings with my mentor. It is always good to set more short-term objectives to help you stay on track for your final goal. Doing this, and sharing with my mentor so she can help me along the way, is really going to be what helps me make continuous progress.
How to Have a Beautiful Mind
Questions – This week allowed me to develop skills in diving deeper into a conversation and letting it continue for a longer period of time.
This week, Xylia told me about something she joined recently related to art that sounded really interesting.
“It’s where there are some teams, and you can draw peoples’ characters to get points for your team. It’s a lot of fun!”
After hearing an initial summary of this, I proceeded to further delve into a conversation with Xylia about her experience and what she likes about it. Although I am not the one participating, it was really good to hear about this type of ‘competition,’ as it gave me some idea of what’s out there. In the future, I might consider taking part in something of the sort.
Listening – A lot of the listening I did during the meeting with my mentor allowed me to draw conclusions about values and perspectives.
- Something that was really beneficial for me to hear was Xylia talking about what she prefers to draw. She has told me a couple times now that she draws a ton of animals and animal characters to represent real people or characters from books. When I asked if she ever draws human figures or characters, she responded with a little laugh.
“I cannot draw people!”
Instead of seeing this as a negative view, it actually provided me with a lot of perspective on art. You don’t have to be amazing at every aspect of the topic you are studying. Recognizing your strengths and weaknesses makes drawing a lot more fun, because you can continue to draw what you like and what you are good at, rather than constantly being discouraged in one area. This is not to say that you should not challenge yourself, but it is really to highlight the fact that you can continue to grow in an area that interests you and gives you back good results. Moving forward, this perception of art will be immensely important to me.
- Sometimes, Xylia and I will draw for different reasons. For example, in the meeting this week, I talked about how drawing has become a very calming process for me when I get really engaged in a piece. Although I’m sure Xylia experiences some of those same feelings of calm, she might value something different in the art process. For example, she sometimes uses it to express herself or her family with characters in different pieces.
Being considerate of what we both value in the process and the end results can really help to make drawing more enjoyable overall, only in different ways from each other.
More progress reports coming soon! (No progress pictures this week because I am having trouble uploading.)
-Lara Chamberlain