I
have mixed feelings about my experience in Drawing 101. On the whole, though, I’m glad I took
the class.
Generally, I found it difficult to
balance an art class with my other commitments at Duke. All the projects were incredibly time
consuming, especially towards the end of the course when we had to draw an
entire landscape for every assignment.
The prospect of adding to my sketchbook became increasingly stressful. The last few weeks of class were not
very enjoyable for this reason, and also because I was seeing less improvement
in my technique, though I was still proud of what I produced.
I think part of my problem was that
I am a perfectionist by nature. I
was spending more and more time and energy on each sketch until it became a
burden to complete one drawing. To
try to cope with this tendency, I would set a timer each time I sat down to
work on my sketchbook and I wouldn’t let myself spend more than a half an hour
on a sketch. I still felt like I
never had time to produce the highest quality of work that I was capable of.
Despite these struggles, I did
enjoy learning how to draw. I had
not taken an art class since the 6th grade, and I missed creating
beautiful things. Since a very
young age, my older sister was (and continues to be) a gifted artist. My work has never been, nor will it
ever be, comparable to hers. For
this reason, I had a bit of a self-defeating attitude when I considered
dabbling in the fine arts, despite my desire to create.
I finally scratched my itch this
semester. I found that I am, as I
suspected, not very talented, but that with practice and a lot of time I could
produce something decent. This is
enough for me. I am proud of
my drawings even if they do not seem like much compared to the art of others.
I am thankful for the opportunity
to learn this craft and to see how far I could take it. I am also happy to have the
pictures that I drew of Duke as keepsakes. I will graduate in a few weeks, and these drawings are a
nice memento of my time here.
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