….you’ll always get what you’ve always got.” I was reminded of this old saying after the life-drawing class on Monday evening. For the past two sessions I’ve been very dissatisfied with my own work, and when I got back home I spent some time looking at what I had done and wondering why I was so unhappy about it. After a while the answer struck me. I had not actually taken any notice of what I was being asked to do, but had permitted myself to fall back on established habits.
We were being asked to work in unfamiliar ways, and in particular to start with areas of colour, loosely blocked in with a large brush. What I had been trying to do, in my habitual way, was to draw the figure. Given the tools with which we were being required to work, this was bound to be a mess….and it was. I actually sent an email to the instructor admitting that this had happened. In fact, I think that he was actually glad that something had registered, even ‘though it was my sense of fed up with myself. There are not many participants in his sessions who do bother to provide feed-back.
This is something I am going to need to monitor closely in future. It is so easy, especially when you have been engaged in art for as long as I have, to fall back upon habit rather than to embrace new possibilities.