I’ve been following a discussion on the Everyday Matters group and it has gotten my wheels turning. The talk has been about the utility of specific drawing assignments suggested by others, whether there’s really utility or purpose to everyone deciding to draw a piece of fruit one week, a pair of shoes the next, and then sharing their work and discussing it. While some people love it and have made it the main business of the group, others have complained that it has diverted the purpose of the group and distracted it from its original intention.
I’m not interested in taking sides because I think any sort of drawing is a good thing. However, I’d like to clarify what I’m up to with my drawing. While I have done some nice drawings here in Rome, I’m not interested in being a travel writer or an illustrator or a fine artist.
I want to live my life to its fullest and I find that drawing what I encounter deepens my appreciation. While I share my work with others, I make it for me. When I have unusual and interesting experiences like I’m having in Rome right now, my drawings seem to have a wider interest. But my core philosophy is that every day matters. Every single day. The day you meet the president. The day you have a baby. The day you find a special on sirloin at the supermarket. The day you get your shoes back from the cobbler. I find that drawing helps me to commemorate those events, large and small, dull and transformative. For me, that’s the point of art. To deepen my understanding of my life.
If someone else’s suggestion that I draw a particular thing opens my eye to fruit or glasses or the pattern of sunshine on my counterpane, then that’s great. But ultimately, we all live different lives and are handed assignments by each dawning day. Each day we’re handed a new set of challenges, new rivers to ford, new choices and wonders and pains and lessons. If we think the day is full and familiar, we need just dig deeper into it, look for fresh insight, peel back the layers of the onion. I find that drawing helps me do that.
Art lessons familiarize one with the tools but they are not a substitute for digging one’s own ditches, constructing one’s own nest. They are just abstractions and life is very concrete. I enjoy what I learn in life-drawing classes, but learn far more by drawing my wife’s sleeping body, my reflection in the bedroom mirror.
To draw, one must draw. Exercises and academic and books provide examples of what one might do, but experience is the real teacher. Take tomorrow as your assignment. Draw your breakfast, your bus stop, your bathroom wall while you’re shitting, your laundry as you fold it, your children as they watch TV, your pillow as you wait for lights out.
Be bold with your exploration. Capture what you do and have always done. Then push yourself to new experiences if only to draw them. Visit new neighborhoods and draw them. Meet new people and draw them. Try new foods, read new books, smell new flowers, do anything that will deepen your understanding and your appreciation of your world and your place in it.
I don’t care if you think your drawings suck, if you are ashamed to show them to anyone else. What matters is that you pause and contemplate. If your record of that contemplation is inaccurate, try again. Feel deeper. See deeper. Slow down. Relax. And tomorrow, do it again. You aren’t being graded or evaluated on your drawing. No more than you are being evaluated on your life itself. The only thing that matters is you. What you experience. How you experience it. How much you get out of this day and the next. This is your life. Dig into it. Embrace it. Notice its curves and angles. Explore its corners. Feels its edges and put them down on paper. The pen, the page, are just tools for you to take time and slow it down. I can’t make you do it my way, any more than I can force you to live your life my way. You decide, you forge your style, you pick the line that draws your life.
Take tomorrow and instead of hesitating and questioning and doubting and fretting, draw your breakfast, draw your day. Then try it again the day after. With each successive day, you’ll be clearer and deeper. If you miss a day, don’t freak out or beat yourself up. Just take on the day after that.
Share the results if you’d like. By sharing you will find commonality and support. But maybe you don’t need more than self sufficiency. In that case, keep your drawings for yourself. Or toss them out as you do them. The drawings don’t matter, the drawing does.
Category: Drawing
Technologica Artistica di Roma
So there have been various technical questions from readers who wonder what sort of mountain of gear I have brought with me here to the Holy City to get shit* onto paper and onto this site. It’s an important and pressing issue so I will explore it here in full.
Here’re the highlights: I carry an aluminum alloy Soltek Pro Easel in a calfskin and spandex torsal harness and a Herman Miller folding titanium stool with translucent Cygnus mesh; a 22×30″ Roma Luss Journal re-bound with 300 lb. Fabriano Artistico Cold Press; a full set of Series 44-14 Dan Smith Autograph Series Watercolor Round brushes in Russian winter male Kolinsky sable fur; my trusty 18 Kt rose gold finished Mother of Pearl 85th Anniversary Aurora fountain pen and three different sets of Daniel Smith watercolor pans, each customized for optimal performance under varying heat and humidity conditions.
Oh, and my personal assistant, Franellika, carries a 72″ linen parasol; two Art Bin Ultimate Solutions tote full of miscellaneous markers, pencils, paints, brushes, scalpels, quills, sandwiches, and iced martini fixins; a fully loaded iPod plus backup; a portable library of travel guides, art monographs and r.crumb sketchbooks; and a yellowing skull for contemplation
Back at the hotel, I have two Power Mac G5s (2.7GHz dual-processors) each rigged up to 30-inch Cinema HD Displays and 2-terrabyte external drives; I digitize my drawings with my Aztek Premier drum scanner and run off prints of each page on my HP Color LaserJet 3700dtn Printer. The gear takes up most of the extra hotel room I set up as EDM production HQ but it’s worth it to bring you my high quality art work in the sort of breath taking verisimilitude you have come to expect from this site.
Any further questions on techniques? Please post a comment and/or refer to this profile of my usual gear inventory and inventory of art supplies. 
—— *My language may be a little questionable today as I have discovered my new favorite filthy thing: The Dawn and Drew Show, the fucking funniest thing I have heard at least since coming to Italy if not before, and am listening to it on iTunes while I write this)
Romin'
Yesterday I managed to throw down a quick drawing at the Trevi fountain before becoming overwhelmed by sun and jetlag. This morning, chipper and well-rested, I packed up my gear to head over to the Vatican. A block from my hotel, I stepped off the too-high curb and crumpled to the ground as tendons thwanged unnaturally in my ankle. Fortunately I had the self-control to get up, hobble back up the hill to the hotel and tell the desk clerk to send me up some ice.
My outer ankle had quickly developed a lump the size of a Mallomar but after three hours in bed, pack on, hoof on pillow pile (RICE- rest, ice, compression, elevation) the patient is still pink and healthy looking and my toes waggle freely so amputation can probably be postponed. I am going to be here for a couple of more weeks so I think I’ll curb my lust for the Sistine Chapel and take it easy.
Was it the Pope, cursing me? Michelangelo pegging me for an interloper? A frustrated cobble-stone-layer who, wishing he too could be watercoloring of a Monday, decided to thwart brush wielding tourists of the future?
The irony: I was crossing the road (or trying to) to check out a place that rents Vespas. Maybe it was just as well I took my spill in my sandals, rather than scraping off several layers of skin and a handful of teeth while zooming around the Coliseum on a two stroke bike. 
I have constrained my drawing to my hotel’s neighborhood which in Rome
is not much of a liability. One could spend the rest of one’s life
drawing this city — the architecture is so rich and organic, the light
is wonderful, the juxtapositions are endlessly diverse. I did this
first piece during an exorbitant pasta lunch (more than $50 for a handful of
pasta and a cappuccino) at the hotel’s rooftop restaurant. Slumped low,
my hoof propped up on another chair, I strained to see the view over
the parapet.
A few blocks away on the Via Veneto, I discovered this marvelous
church. Beneath is a wonderfully macabre series of crypts, room after
room of Benedictine monks’ dismembered skeletons arranged into
sculptures and decorations — piles of skulls, chandeliers made of
tailbones, shoulder blade rosettes and baldacchinos made of pelvises.
Long lines of teenaged American girls file in and out, squealing “Ew,
gross!” and “Creeeeepy!”. I found it quite beautiful and touching, so
many 17th century bones committed to remind one of the temporary nature
of life on this planet, “As you were so once was I ; as I am so shall
you be.”
It was impossible to draw down there among the crowds so I retired to
the Church of the Immaculate above and drew its back room as the light
slowly faded and my watercolor box disappeared into the gloom. At one
point, a nut brown monk came over and wished me “Pace” but I was
already suffused with peace.
On the Piazza Barberini, I started to draw an old cinema surrounded by
lovely crumbling facades when a big white panel van pulled right up in
front of me and blocked my view. Instead I worked on another building,
listening with one ear to two slurring Englishwomen at the next table
who were drinking huge vasefuls of lager and snapping pix of each other
and emailing them to pals back home. Eventually my friends, the Pratts,
came and joined me and I laid down my pen.
Annie Pratt is a believer in homeopathic medicine and prescribed some
Arnica to me. The next morning my ankle was a lot less swollen and,
after various meetings on casting and production, we headed off to
visit the Colosseum and the rest of ruined Rome. It was blazing hot and
crowded and I couldn’t bring myself to tackle drawings of the broken
columns. En route, my pocket was picked on the subway; the bastards
made off with about $100. Sprained ankle, thieving gypsies, John
Roberts … I wonder what sort of bad luck I’ll face today.
I’m not the tourist type. My neighborhood in New York is always
overrun by people wearing comfortable clothes and cameras clutching
guide books and asking “Scusi, where Greenwich Village?” I am always gracious but wish they would walk a little faster and get a clue.
But in Rome, do as the Romanians do. Get a guide book, a map, and start
blundering around town. Nonetheless, despite my backpack, my folding
stool, my sandals, and my sweaty, parched ways, I try to pretend not to
be desperately foreign. Of course, I fail. Waiters address me in
English, vendors hawk after me with postcards and foot high replicas of
David
My self-loathing came to an end in Vatican City. When I lined up with
the rest of the unwashed and finally reached the portal of St.Peter’s,
I was so overcome by the beauty and splendor of the place that I just
let go and gawked. Wow. The plundered marble and bronze of the Coliseum
is mind-bpoggling lavish.. And then, waiting until the end of the day
to avoid the lines, I swept through the Vatican Museum to the Sistine
Chapel, discovering amazing things I’d never known along the way. The
map room, hundreds of yards long and encrusted with thousands of
perfect paintings worked into the walls and ceilings, the Raphael
frescoes (how could the Pope manage the hubris to command such geniuses
to paint his apartment floor to ceiling, wall after wall? Here he is a
single guy with the most ornate, Baroque pad in the universe.. How did
he sleep in there at night? It’s awesome), and then finally the
Sistine. I have read books about it, seen endless reproductions and
thought I grasped Michelangelo’s accomplishment. But to be confronted
by so much epic scenery, so many perfect, enormous bodies…; whether he painted it alone or with a crew, it’s an incredible, deeply moving feat.
I gush. I can’t help it. Despite my cynicism and my discomfort with the
Papacy’s greed, I may have to go again. My name is Danny and I’m a
tourist (don’t tell my boss — I am here working after all).
Two Roman drawings that took a while. The first about an hour, the
second, close to it,
I was moved by police three times during the first which screwed up my
sight lines a bit. The second I’m less happy with, too many stylized
people, less observed, more illustrative, too much blue underpainting,
but, whatever, it was fun to do.
Rome is just insanely great to draw because of all the details and textures and juxtapositions. Work is
done for the week — I can’t wait to spend my weekend out on my stool.
This wonderful building is on the corner of my block. It sits on top of its own little hill, surrounded by gardens. I pass it most days and finally took the time, on two separate occasions, to study it in detail. 
This city is so full of surprises. Turn a corner and a wonderful composition or juxtaposition will just jump out. This one suddenly appeared between the trees as I was hiking out to eat dinner; branches parted like a curtain to reveal this vista backed by the setting sun.
Another view that popped out; this one seen from above from a hill. These little temples must have been restored in the Roman fashion; the little tubby demons are so sweet.
The Borghese Gardens have a giant air ballon in the style of the Gondolfier Brothers. It rises silently in the air for fifteen minute trips from which one can see the whole city. Nothing in Rome is more than six stories so the big landmarks pop out across the landscape. I have now been here long enough to identify the Vatican, the Victor Emanuel Monument, the various piazzas, the Coliseum, etc.
A little bit of color, exaggerated, as it was painted in the failing light of an ending day.
I’m finally getting the hang of tires. Wheels have always confounded me when I draw cars and stuff but as I say, in Europe, I’m finally getting the hang of tyres. 
Notice the small brown mini dots on this drawing? That’s because when I start doing and drawing of something so complicated or big or whatever that I get nervous, I take a few measurements with an outstretched arm and a pen and then make little marks to indicate where things fall.
Despite all that, this drawing, made as people were rushing to work at 9 am and I had to get my ass moving for a 10 o’clock meeting, is lopsided and misisng all sorts of bits that didn’t end up fitting on the page.
Another drawing done in decline, lopsided, colored like a coloring book and full of cheats to fit stuff in. When I slow my ass way way down, I can draw things like that Vespa up above. When I rush and people hang over my shoulder and I’m roasting in the sun, Things get bleak. I know that about myself and yet I keep doing it. Sometime I can save a drawing afterwards with loads of crosshatching but it’s a lost cause, a charade, not in the moment. But, then, later in the afternoon, during the wardrobe fitting, waiting for our actors to change, I drew the Vespa which I’m pretty happy with, particularly the tyres. So even when the knack hides, it resurfaces. So shut up and do another drawing.
Chicago on four hours' sleep
I am posting this from my room in Rome, still fairly jetlagged but eager to get out there tomorrow and start drawing. Meanwhile, here are some journal pages from the last few days while I was shooting in Chicago, specifically at an 80-year old institution called the Aragon ballroom.
Most of our days lasted more than 16 hours and we wrapped at 3 am; the effects are visible in my drawings which are actually quite nice and loose though manically, Tom Kanesian in their crosshatched detail.
My colors are a little bolder than usual — I should probably continue to paint in the gloom.
I drew entirely in Sepia ink and watercolors, and many of these entries were doing in semi darkness and while severely sleep deprived. My marginal comments seem even more crabby and distracted than usual.
Drawing day
I have been kerchunking out drawings today, primarily for the Morning News. As part of the series’ illustrations I’ve been doing for the newly redesigned site, Rosecrans, my editor, asked me to create a drawing for TMN’s occasional round table discussions. At first, feeling uninspired, I pulled out a photo of a conference room business discussion and turned it into this.
The next day, Rosecrans said he liked everything I’d been doing except the roundtable illustration one which looked like I’d done it from a photo of a conference room business discussion. So I took another crack at it, this time a little more bohemian and came up with this.
My next job was to create illustrations for the next installment of Peanut is coming up on Tuesday. I decided to just focus on still life objects that represent parts of the story rather than contrive some actual illustrations of people and events, my least favorite illustration to do. These are three separate ones.
At the new Blick art store down my street, I picked up a new set of Pelikan opaque watercolors. They are a little chalky but work pretty well in moderate conjunction with my transparent watercolors. A worthwhile addition for just 20 bucks for 24 colors. I also grabbed a handful of PITT artists pens from Faber Castell. I love their brush pens and now will try out the S and F pens in black and umber.
I also splurged and bought myself a new set of watercolors called “Yarka St Petersburg”. They were pretty expensive: $69 for a set of 24 pans but I really want to upgrade my colors and I hate little tubes. I’ve tried making my own set by drying little cakes in a metal box but it was a disaster.
Anyway, when I got the St. Pete’s home, I realized they were not worth the money. The pans sit in a flimsy plastic box that would crack in no time in the field. And the pans themselves sit in the thinnest plastic egg carton sort of arrangement of cups. There’s no way they will survive a year or so of daily use. Why would anyone make such a flimsy piece of shit I wonder? The Pelikans are beautifully made and designed (though the paints themselves are probably just student grade) and these professional paints were designed by monkeys who’d never seen a real human use them,. They’re going back to the store this afternoon.
Step-by-Step comics
The Drawminator
What goes on when three grizzled illustrated superjournalistas go on an innocent drawing trip? A Clash of the Titans that transforms the art world (kinda). Enjoy the dramatic first installment of “The Drawminator”. Click on thumbnails for successive page.
Assignment of the day
It’s hot as a bastard and we are all recovering from four performances of Annie Get Your Gun in three days. I have spent the past two mornings in the air-conditioned apartment working on an assignment for The Morning News which is about to launch its year long redesign. Rosecrans, my editor, asked me to draw three illustrations to work as launch-pads for the serialized books that appear on the site every couple of weeks.
I had already done a couple of different icons for Peanut:
This one is meant to look like a sonogram of a peanut. It’s okay though a little gimmicky.
Then I came up with this one based on a photo of an embryo, sort of 2001-ish but not really uniquely mine.
I decided to start from scratch with more conventional ink and watercolor drawings, each about 4-5 inches square. I painted this fairly scary drawing; still it’s somehow cute in a plucked chick kind of way and I like it.
For The letters of Gary Benchley, Rock Star, I bypassed my initial thought of painting some instruments ( I have recently done three different illustration jobs requiring sketches of guitars) and decided to try to capture some rock’n’roll energy. I did this drawing fairly quickly and I like it too.
I struggled most with The Education of Elisabeth Eckleman. It seemed that every story had Elisabeth in tears at some point so I decided to tackle it this way. I was a little worried that I had been overly influenced by fantasies of Molly Ringwold and was listening to too much of the new 9 Inch Nails album and Elisabeth isn’t quite in that nexus.
I fired off an email to Sarah Hepola, Elisabeth’s creator, who wrote: “She’s a cute 18 year old girl — brown shoulder-length hair that’s a bit curly/frizzy (she likes to straighten it out), a little girlish pudge in her cheeks. Blue eyes. She’s from a small town, so she doesn’t have that natural college girl look yet — she wears a lot of makeup, probably earrings. she probably wears a lot of tank tops and shorts.”
I’m no expert on the nuances of 18-year-old girls anymore and I was a little tense as I went back to the drawing board.
This was my second and final effort. It has personality and particularity more than the first but tells less of a story and has a little too much Walter Keane in it
I’ll let Rosecrans pick.
Doing a 180
My pal, Jim, is directing our commercials out here in LA. After reading Everyday Matters, he’s become increasingly intrigued with learning to draw. He told me he knew he couldn’t draw, didn’t think he ever could, but still always wanted to know how. I told him about Betty Edwards’ book and the next day, he showed up with his own copy of Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain.
Each day he reads the book between takes and each night he works on drawing exercises. Just three days in, he drew the drawing above, a copy of Picasso’s Stravinsky.
This is one of the most powerful exercises in Edward’s book. You are told to copy this image which is printed upside down in the book. You draw each line individually, then move on to the next, building up the picture stroke by stroke. Everyone who tries it describes the same reaction. They are beating themselves up as they do it, ‘Oh, you drew that line wrong, this is a mess, you’ll never do this, etc.’ and yet persevere. When they are finished and turn the page around, they are blown away. They cannot believe their eyes. The drawing looks remarkably like Picasso’s original.
For almost everyone, this simple fifteen minute exercise transforms their view of themselves. It flips a switch in your head that says I can draw! and gives you permission to keep going, to polish your skills, to trust that you’ll keep improving, and get on the road to drawing as you only dreamed you could.
If you’d like to try this exercise, use Jim’s drawing (You can download a bigger scan of it here.). Print it out, turn it upside down, then slowly and carefully copy each line with a pen onto a sheet of paper. Then, brace yourself and turn it around.
What do you think? Let me know.
Seeing the forest, oh, and the trees
In The Art Spirit, my pal Bob Henri talks about the importance of that original intention which sparks one to make a drawing or a painting. What caught my interest? And, all critically, how do I hold on to that intention so my art is infused with that interest? It’s not enough to decide to draw a tree, one must feel something about that tree and have that feeling right in front of one’s eyes and one observes. His advice is to work fast and furiously, blocking in the big masses while the flame is still burning.
My usual technique is to move slowly, with a blank mind. I enter a meditative state and let my eyes cruise around the contours, laying down every line with equal weight until I have explored the whole object. I rarely try to feel anything as I do this but I must be. I choose certain subjects over others because I like them or am curious about them. So I decided to be more aware and to explore some other ways of looking at a tree a few blocks from my hotel.
I spent a good long time working in ink first. I was very into the carbuncles and folds of the tree’s skin. As I drew, I became increasingly aware of the tree’s colors: it was quite yellow but cloaked in purple, two complimentary colors. I kept thinking about how these colors inter-played and then I painted over my line with watercolors. I was using my new paper, this Yupo pad I picked up on the weekend. The ink went down very smoothly on it but had a tendency to smear. As I painted I was pretty aware of how unnaturally the paint went down, pooling on the paper instead of soaking in. The colors remained pretty vivid, undimmed by the fibers, but it all felt temporary somehow. I couldn’t really let go, worrying that the whole thing would wipe of the page when I was done. I also felt like I had a long lens on — I was only looking at each square inch of the tree but had little sense of the whole as I drew.
While the pad lay drying in the afternoon sun, I decided to have another go and grabbed my trusty Japanese journal with its 100+lb paper ( intended for drawing but it’ll take watercolor pretty well) and my Faber-Castell PITT bold brown brush marker. In three minutes, I knocked out a sketch, thinking all the while about the flow and energy of the tree. I did a caricature of the yellow and violet and capped my pen.
Next I took a black PITT pen and thought about the tree’s architecture, how it anchored into the ground and how the limbs were bolted onto the spine of the creature. I bore down harder on my pen, drawing firmer lines and painting in more defined shapes of color.
Finally I took my cheap Sheaffer italic pen, loaded with dark brown non-waterproof ink and this time I thought about the movement of the trees, how the carbunckly growth flowed like water or vomit from the trees crotch, how the limbs pulled in different directions and how that tension held the tree together and propelled it into the sky. Now the tree seemed almost serpentine to me, writhing out of the soil, phallic, twisting, alive. The watercolors dulled the lines but it felt okay, as if the fusing the whole thing together.
I look at these four drawings and I’m not sure yet what conclusion to draw about them. I like the earthy energy of my last drawing (as if it was made by a goat or a mole) but there’s still something lovely and light about the first bird-like one. Each has something to say in its way, like the varied members of a string quartet, the ingredients of a cassoulet.
One conclusion is clear: Drawing never fails to amaze me; how it can rip open the doors into your head, how it can transform the world and your place in it. Nobody but me can see this process, this unfolding, as it happens to me. All that’s left for others to see are the pages in my journal, the ass wipings on paper — but never the feast.
Danny Gregory 