Vacation Day 6: Art Hacking

Today, the dog and I scurried out to Diefenbacher Park: to try my hand at Frisbee golf, and to let Ella snoop amidst the bushes in some of the more denser overgrown paths around the top of the river bank. As well, I found a place to forage for Saskatoon berries; Ella found herself a bunch of chipmunks to pester and chase around. We lingered around there until the mosquitoes got the best of us.

My pad, my fresh brewed coffee, and European cookies.
A simple setting for a relaxing happy place to begin.

Later on, it was perhaps a lucky thing that I discovered that I had no more coffee filters left, and that I was going to be deprived of my daily morning brew at home. I use a five cup coffeemaker, and the only place I know that has the filters for it is the dollar store. So, I went there.

I love the Dollarama Store. It's a reminder to me that most of the things that give me pleasure are simple ones. The one I go to is the place where I find the German and Italian cookies I like, which cannot be found everywhere else. So, I bought some of those, along with my filters, plus a $3.00 sketch pad, for one of the biggest challenges of this week that I've given myself.

It's either a crude drawing of my hand, or else a very accurate
 one that shows just how ugly my hand really is. 

I suppose the mission of today was to knock some dust out of the right hemisphere of my brain, and test out my artistic side, or just to see if I actually have one. I'm sure as I write this that I'll be talking about my artistic ability like I was from friggin' Mars or something. I haven't tried to draw anything in a very long time. I don't even think that I drew pictures or coloured much as a kid. I'm ashamed to admit that I'm a total chicken-shit when I'm approached and asked to try to do something artistic. It was a real stretch for me to plunge into the activity of  'rock painting' a couple of weeks ago when a co-worker of mine, who is very good at crafts, invited me to join the rest doing it. At this age, it seems like when I see a blank page, I seem to be too reserved, or too weirdly fearful that I'll corrupt it somehow with some kind of ghastly indelible mark, that will be like some sort of total perversion when compared to a real masterpiece. That same anxiety sort of hit me when I placed that blank page in front of myself. Writing is comparatively easier. There are only 26 letters in the alphabet (of my language), 10 digits, and a handful of punctuation marks and symbols to use in a structured way. The most intimidating thing that strikes my analytical mind right away is that there are infinite ways to use and arrange points, lines, curves, and shades on a piece of paper to make even a simple object. Infinity is overwhelming.



Hack #1: Cone, Cube, Cylinder, Sphere. All forms can
be derived from some variation of these four shapes. 

I wish there was an easier way to "hack" artistic talent, or to at least be wary of and remember some things that falls somewhere along the lines of the Pareto principle applied to art: knowing how to use just the basic 20% of the skills one can tap into to create 80% of the detail in a masterfully made production. I relapsed into being total geek and researched some stuff, and I did find some useful pointers.

To not make this process too intimidating I stuck to a minimalist approach. I only used a pencil. I also found an erasure shield, something that came in a grab bag when I checked out a garage sale a few years ago, I believe the seller was a retired architect.


I thought I'd start off making a project of practical application of it too: by drawing my own 'manual' of technique hacks.

I think the most valuable one I learned is the pencil scaling trick (Hack #2), where the pencil and thumb are used as a sighting tool to gain perspective, plot marking and reference points, and to frame and align a scene by finding its particular vantage point.

Hack #3 is simply random play, and testing out refining strokes and shading.

I sure as hell won't be a Da Vinci or Rembrant, but these few little tricks I learned added exponentially to what little talent I originally thought I had.