If We Can Self-Reflect on Our Capacity Growth, It Accelerates, Part 1

It’s the beautiful mid-point Wed-Thur of the week where I have a lull in online meetings and shift my attention to drawing, photography and reflection and the part of my brain that is usually on hyperdrive is enjoying the rest from overstimulation.

This time I went back to small series drawing (a series drawing is a set of several sketches of the same object from different angles) from David Morales’ online course, Illustrated Diary as a small do-able step to get back into drawing. I also drew for the first time, a figure drawing of a martial arts move from a young female martial artist’s video from China whose original source I cannot find to reference. I usually draw immobile figure drawings focused on shape and clothing.

A particular capacity that I’ve noticed I’m growing recently is the capacity to see how likely doing a particular thing is to meet a particular need that is up for me. For example, scrolling through various illustrations and artworks earlier this week, I realized I was wanting to draw. I’ve had this realization before, but usually continue looking at artworks. This time, I chose to pull out my sketchbook and pencil and drew the martial arts move above. I also have a sense of landing on something particularly potent in drawing martial arts as it was a big part of my life for over a decade when I was younger. It’s like something connected for me.

I had the epiphany through watching this video that what I’m wanting when looking at various artworks and illustrations is to draw. It’s not even the focus of this particular video, there’s just a particular moment in the role play where Lisa role plays a daughter responding to her mother and says, “Maybe we could watch an anime together and I could do some drawing. Maybe we could do some freeze frames and I could do some drawing through that.”. A little thing that gave me great insight into myself.

In part 2 I will go through another topic related to this drawing that’s been on my mind recently and has a liberation edge to it.

Until then!