Final Dayz

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My intro to drawing class is nearly over I've learned a lot of stuff some stuff about drawing and others regarding my limitations and others perhaps about my desires. I found the class informative I've enjoyed the time particularly the early morning time, dashing from my apartment to the building Construction Trades bldg. When I started taking the class early in the spring I was taking the bus back and forth to class  but soon defaulted to driving my power chair and dashing back and forth in the heat of the summer. I was just too impatient to wait for the bus to pick me up and drive me the short distance to my apartment complex.

I must admit I was a bit chagrined as I was confronted with each project the instructor assigned usually at the beginning of each week. I don't know what I was expecting, really but this is a serious introduction to drawing class starting with the bare-bones basics. It's not like I think I'm better than that it's just that it's really difficult at least it is for me. The whole detail thing which I think is kind of fascinating you know vanishing points and beginning lines and ending lines and seems everything in between. I did not realize how intimidated I could be of boxes and spheres. The first half of the class was just line drawing you know pyramids, mazes and all kinds of things like that which is really hard! The second portion of the class was also just as hard but this was the beginning of shading, texturing and all kinds of fine point things of drawing. What I wasn't prepared for (and this is so true and to so much of my life) is how physical this project has been. Everything from what I consider the oversize clipboard, to the purchase of a really big tablet and of course the portfolio the sure sign of the art student, usually that big black case that keeps all of your art things together. Essentially a bag with a zipper that your clipboard fits inside. The only is this contraption awkward to carry back and forth to class. Even things as simple as going in and out of the building as well as on off the bus. I must balance the portfolio on my foot pedals and move forward trying not to catch the sides of doorways and turnstiles on the bus. I got a big size tablet just because I thought that was smart but it's not. Tablets very heavy I think I got 80 sheets generally used about five or six in the course of the class. I have to tear sheets out of the tablet put on my clipboard because the tablet itself to be too hard to carry back and forth to class. Then there's the case of just sliding the clipboard in and out of the portfolio whether it's at home getting ready for class or when I'm finished at class coming home sliding that clipboard inside the portfolio surreal trip but it's something you have to do I think if you're an artist but is that physical challenge I was not really prepared for. I'm proud to say that was able to pull it off given enough time and started early enough so people don't have to wait on me but it's a trip. Perhaps one of the most frustrating of my physical challenges is trying to draw on the big sheets of paper. Because I cannot access the horse I cannot draw with the tablet slanted upright. I have to use a flat surface this means to some degree that I cannot even reach the upper limits of the paper which greatly hampers what may end project looks like. I have to accept this and just go on and draw as good as I can regardless of how primitive my work appears. If I focused on this too much it would break my heart. Still, I am so glad I took this class but I should've taken 50 years ago in junior high not that it would have made much difference, I think, but it certainly would've let me know what my able-bodied self could of achieved but then again perhaps all things are best as they turn because what if I was really good and then suddenly have all my abilities taken away. Somehow I think this is the way it needed to be.