Drawing

I’ve taken up the practice of keeping a sketchbook and drawing in it daily. I felt completely out of my depths at first, but borrowed Everyday Drawing and Sketching by Steven B. Reddy, followed the steps, and immediately felt encouraged enough by the results to continue. Reddy’s tone is so friendly that one can release oneself from the death-grip of perfectionism.

I’ve noticed, as my enthusiasm for the activity has yet to wane, that it‘s the nature of the activity - the practice that leads to incremental improvement - that I like. Maya Shankar explains it perfectly in an interview on People I Mostly Admire:

Fundamentally, one of the things that I love engaging in are pursuits where your inputs feel like they really matter because they’re expressed in outputs. The more you practice, the better you become as a violinist. And that’s not true in every discipline. You can try your absolute hardest on this latest start-up but then all these market factors and exogenous factors play a role and you just don’t have control over the system. But it felt like I could see the translation of my hard work and see it manifested in better playing. And when you choose a pursuit like that, it can be endlessly satisfying because you’re not always concerned with the absolute quality of playing, you’re concerned with the delta: how much progress you’re seeing over time.

So yay for sketchbooks!