Under the Bathroom Sink, 2022, Charcoal Pencil

This was my first drawing homework assignment, ever.  I sat on the floor at eye level and used the open cabinet door to create a closed frame. I was happy with the way my first sketchbook drawing turned out, but moving to the larger paper threw me at first. It took a few starts to map out the scale and positions of the objects.  Using a charcoal pencil was a new skill, and it took some awareness not to smudge the paper.  I worked from left to right, and worked to vary my pressure to indicate different types of materials and depths.  I also tried to keep in mind that it’s ok to suggest, rather than fully depict, all the details that inevitably catch my eye, for example, the circular holes in the plastic bins.  Visualizing my hand as an extension of my eye, I crept like a tiny inchworm moving along the contours.  I think my love for detail is somewhat in conflict with the goal here of focusing on the negative space between the volumes.  But conceptually, I’m all in…what makes a piece of music or poetry beautiful is often just as much the silences as the sounds or words.   Overall, I was very happy with this first project.  It ticked off a few boxes for me:  elevating the humble everyday to a celebration of form, and accomplishing something that I had never done before, focusing for an hour at a stretch to look closely at what was really there, and try to draw it, slowly.