Apparently it was 7 years ago today that I started learning how to draw as a hobby.

Reflecting on the last decade for me, drawing is something that really stands out that I’m happy and proud that I invested in, so here’s a thread of some of my drawings/art in those years. https://twitter.com/kclemson/status/1198497234813251584
I made this drawing (graphite pencil) on the second day after I decided to start learning. I used the grid system from a “learn to draw” book I was working through, it was a helpful way to get used to observing and replicating relative sizes in a subject.
From day one I knew I wanted to learn how to draw portraits in a semi-realistic style, so I spent a bunch of time practicing shading.

My first real attempt at a portrait was a few days after I started drawing. Also see below for the book I used.

https://twitter.com/kclemson/status/919265519269638146?s=21 https://twitter.com/kclemson/status/919265519269638146
After spending the end of December 2012 practicing on my own, I decided I wanted expert help and signed up for an “intro to drawing” class at the local community college ( @BellevueCollege) which was one evening a week for a few months. I learned SO much in this class.
In particular I took away so many great lessons about *observing* something and noticing how light and shade interplay to create visual effects.

2 months into the class, I drew a portrait (charcoal) of Penelope Cruz from a magazine, it’s still one of my all time favs I’ve done:
And *after* drawing that and sealing it with fixative so I could get it framed, I realized I’d actually drawn an extra line in her hand, making it look like she had six fingers. So much for all those lessons about observation 😆. This has since become one of my favorite mistakes.
Around this time, my dad was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer. From the day of the diagnosis all the doctors carefully set our expectations that any cancer treatment would be palliative not curative & that he had months left. I desperately wanted to create a drawing of him but...
I tried several times and it was clear my skills weren’t there yet. But luckily I stumbled on https://www.reddit.com/r/redditgetsdrawn/ where people post a pic they want drawn, and redditors wanting drawing practice would post their drawing of that pic in the replies.
From that community, an AMAZING artist created this drawing for me of me and my dad, from a pic that was taken just before my dad started chemo. He wanted to get his hair cut off before starting chemo so that he’d have it all dealt with at once, vs losing hair thru the process.
The pic was so incredible that I DM’d the artist and asked if I could pay him for his time & to ship me the drawing. It turned out he was a soldier deployed in Afghanistan! He drew as a way to take his mind off of... things.
The redditgetsdrawn subreddit was so inspiring to me and I made many valiant attempts at drawing portraits from pics that people posted... and while some were okay-ish, it was clear that I had a lot more to learn 😁 so I took another class at BCC, “intro to portrait drawing”.
I should be clear that 4 years passed between the beginning and ending part of the above tweet... I was drawing frequently throughout 2013, and then my dad died and... I just kind of soured on doing anything creative for a while, I just didn’t have it in me anymore.
Throughout 2014-2016, I would get back in and out of drawing in fits and spurts, for a month at a time, and then deprioritize it for a while because of other demands in life. I did always make sure to paint pumpkins every Halloween, which was a nice forcing function.
In 2017 I decided to specifically prioritize art higher in my life for a while and so I took that class on drawing portraits. And it was AMAZING! I drew from real models & learned about how to space different facial features to make a portrait “look right” to our brains.
Also in that class, we practiced drawing entire portraits from those real models in 20mins end to end, which was WAY faster than the ~3-4 hours I had been spending on a single portrait. This constraint forced me to better prioritize my drawing time, to capture the essence.
I drew these two portraits in that class, and they are still some of my favorite I’ve ever made, as I feel like I captured the essence of each model’s pose and expression, which makes me so happy.
Of course, I like to mix my drawing practice up with something else I also enjoy doing for fun: crafting puns.

https://twitter.com/kclemson/status/909957077954469889?s=21 https://twitter.com/kclemson/status/909957077954469889
My Instagram is kind of a record of when I was in a ‘drawing phase’ or not. It’s weird in retrospect to have a hobby I *love* but don’t consistently *do*. It’ll be 6mo since the last time I picked up a pen & then I can’t put it down for 2wks. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

http://instagram.com/kc_lemson 
I ran across this pic earlier this year and saved it because it really hit me in the gut. This is how it feels for me, & it annoys me to no end that it feels like it’s a bit out of my control if I’m in a creative place or not.
I’ve been working on decoding my own behavior to identify any correlations between when I *feel* super creative & what I may have done to lead to that because, well, #nerd. I like spending time inward, figuring out how I work, as if I’m a giant pile of code to debug/optimize.
As part of this process/journey, I have to say that while social media platforms have their issues, I really love they help with the “record keeping”, so to say. Earlier today while searching for a tweet about drawing practice, I ran across this😻quote.

https://twitter.com/kclemson/status/1003372942?s=21 https://twitter.com/kclemson/status/1003372942
From my self-debugging and reading, I’ve realized that for my personal ‘creative engine’, the times when it seems to have been running at peak efficiency, is often correlated with me having had an initial spark of an idea that meets the following criteria:
1) It’s simple/fast to try a single time - to know if it’s valuable as an ‘output’ of the creative engine

One example is when I made a silly pic of someone’s dog in a reply on one thread, and then spent the next week having a blast making others:

https://twitter.com/kclemson/status/1099059426802061312?s=21 https://twitter.com/kclemson/status/1099059426802061312
2) Is the idea *also* extensible to a broader concept somehow?

One example from my life is that I somehow ended up creating an entire card game because... I read a funny Tumblr?

https://twitter.com/kclemson/status/1088641232547377152?s=21 https://twitter.com/kclemson/status/1088641232547377152
2.1) And it eventually turned into an actual, fun, fully playable game printed on paper in a real box and everything?

(I still am amused by how odd this is to me, as it’s not like I have a particular passion for the craft of game creation)

https://twitter.com/kclemson/status/1125258913081769984?s=21 https://twitter.com/kclemson/status/1125258913081769984
3) And the last criteria is: I find that my sparks of creativity happen more frequently when I’m reacting to something or someone else & riff from there as a bit of an adjacency, vs creating something out of nowhere.

Staring at a blank canvas is so hard.
For example, I made this painting after seeing a pic of it online, and I had the idea that it would be even funnier in a physicaI form. https://twitter.com/kclemson/status/1192181155144974336?s=21
Another example of #3 for me is this recent painting, which I created after a friend on Facebook was so enthusiastic in response to my post about the Futurama-themed painted pumpkins I was making, and I wanted to create something for him as a thank you.

https://twitter.com/kclemson/status/1188918367001858048?s=21 https://twitter.com/kclemson/status/1188918367001858048
This is a roundabout example of #3 - I *love* this drawing of my dog. But the reason I made it is that I first *tried* to draw a pic of my friend’s dog but struggled, so I practiced w/ my own dog (who has a simpler fur pattern), to learn the techniques.

https://twitter.com/kclemson/status/1197418431517061120?s=21 https://twitter.com/kclemson/status/1197418431517061120
The process of me learning to draw has resulted in so many fun stories from my life that I end up telling in random conversations later on. Stories like:

In my portrait drawing class, one day’s exercise was to draw a self-portrait. I rather liked how mine was shaping up:
So when the teacher was making the rounds of the class to check up on each student’s work, I was feeling a bit cocky as she walked over to my easel.

And then she said:

https://twitter.com/kclemson/status/316420720416657408?s=21 https://twitter.com/kclemson/status/316420720416657408
Adding a link to this here since this thread tracks my favorite art projects :)

https://twitter.com/kclemson/status/1264385835102691329?s=21 https://twitter.com/kclemson/status/1264385835102691329
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