The way I see it, prolongued exposure to art will give you superpowers. You walk into its temple, pencil in hand, mind wrapped in wonder, and before long you realise you’re getting spiritual guidance through a visual language you didn’t know existed.
There are lines and volumes and shapes and silhouettes and shadows and highlights all around you. Of course, your unprepared mind can’t handle all the information the brain gets, but you start training. Mirrors and smoke, particles, textures start to take shape in your frontal lobe and before long, your attention pushes its borders, widening the viewport’s borders like elevator doors opening.
You’re a disciple in a religion of observation, digestion and rendition. The Holy Trinity of visual art. The dojo isn’t empty though. Rows of fellow artists to your left, right, front, back. For a minute there, you feel like you’re back in high school –
Dissaproving giggles from people looking over your shoulder and questioning your vision and preparation. An elbow nudging you from the side reminds you there’s some support from people who understand, appreciate, and hunger for what you have to offer. And lastly, the corner of your eye catches details in how the silent masters in the front rows work.
You notice they never hurry. You notice they think their creations through. You notice there is a concept so elaborate behind every detail, that it all forms a story. Characters drawn express so much through so little effort, their clean lines determining features and conveying information that is never, ever, less than in perfect synergy with the composition’s elements.
Finally, you start sketching what comes to mind. While studies will develop your grammar, how inventive your words bind together in a sketch’s sentence are something you inherently hold, a treasure of all your memories.
You have a visual library at hand. Everything you see, everything you do changes you. It affects how you make art, what kind of art you make and above all else, why. You become limitless as soon as you don’t care if the people behind you think you fail. Your only competition becomes your own ambition, and though your metaphorical body is still meditating hatches on a sketchbook, your soul’s exam takes place far away, in a plane nobody else can access.
As soon as you emerge victorious from yet another trial though, it’s as clear as day, through what your sketchbook has to say. You see, you can’t lie in art. It’s all there, like an X-Ray of your creative capabilities. Your resume is your work, your biography is transparent to anyone not wearing horse blinkers or other sight-impairment conditions.
Whether you wield a ballpoint pen or a katana, a mechanical B2 or a dagger, it’s all about discipline, tactics, finesse and subtlety. It’s about becoming invisible – you cease to exist as an entity, and become like unto a force of nature. The results matter beyond the frail flesh and bones that make up your puny meatsack of an ever-dying body.
Your final lesson is that you draw with your brain, not your body. And your brain is limitless.
That’s my theory. Beautifully fucking illustrated. In antithesis to Sick Boy’s view:
Stay tuned for the stop-motion.
