I still remember the first shock that I got on the first day of class. I printed out a square without knowing what I’d have to do with it. It was a photo that I took on the street, and it came with a small story.
The class had started, with the assignment where we were instructed to make drawings around the square photo, extending whatever is printed around the corners. My picture was a photo of someone cleaning the window (shown below), and I thought that it would be harder than other photos because of the lines on the photos were very geometric. It’s harder to hand draw and continue very symmetric, drawing lines especially not knowing the real outlines.
When I was little, I used to take 4-5 hours drawing, or making small figurines out of paper. I liked doing things that took a lot of effort, time, and patience. So I as usual, I took my time drawing and sketching out the lines beyond the photo. I look around and I see people almost being done with theirs and aren’t afraid to make moves.
I used pencil to carefully trace out and plan where I was going to ink the paper. But the teacher came and told me that I should be bold about it and use a sharpie directly. I started drawing with the sharpie but the lines wouldn’t come neat, it would bleed and the lines would get bigger, and I ended up not being able to control the lines I was drawing. So i switched to a regular MUJI ink pen and the results came out great. For the less dark black area, like the window panes which are more of a grey tone, I used pencil and filled it in.
I wished I had more time to finish but the photo it self, because they were a series of windows aligned next to each other, it wasn’t hard to find out what the cropped image of the window would look like, extended outside.
This is when I brought it home and drew a lot more.
