quare id faciam?

Habit (re)forming

For a long time I've been telling myself I'd start drawing frequently again. My mind often turns to this worthy intention ... but my hands don't. "Soon," I tell myself – and of course soon is never now. I know, though, that drawing for one who draws, like writing for one who makes poetry or playing for one knows an instrument, has to be first a habit, not an ideal. You don't, at bottom, conceive of yourself as creative, an artist, and then enact a plan of study & practice for realizing what you suppose this amounts to – though becoming fully formed as an artist probably does demand assorted attempts at such a plan. But at bottom, at genesis, you fall into the habit of mind & practice from which being "creative" may come – and thereafter you don't dismiss the urge; you tend it, you privilege it.

I have no aspiration to become an artist, truthfully. But drawing is something early, something basic, for me; and I want to retain it & maintain it, for (at least) the formation of mind it provides for.

And yet I've mostly fallen out of the habit. I need to fall back in. The bit of sketch above is an example of the very kind of thing I need to be doing, whether spontaneously (even irresponsibly) or by way of time set aside. In fact I did just do this a little while ago – an old favorite thing to do, my left hand (the nearest interesting object to hand – literally). A little light drawing, a little unconcerned sketching, simply needs to happen like this here & there, day to day, whether I've expected I'd do it or not. In this case I picked up a notebook in which I've very occasionally drawn something over the several years I've had it; but for what matters, I shouldn't require so much as a sketchbook. My mind, my eyes, and my hands should fall to this, having a pencil & paper handy, as a smoker wanders outside without much thought and lights a cigarette.

(By the way, I don't know ASL! If these sketches suggest signing, it's not intended.)

posted by paul bowman @ 12:45 AM