Hellloooo my wonderful artist friends.
This is a delight. This whole darn thing. You are a delight. Truly. I’m so happy we’re here drawing together for 10 minutes every day. It seems small, but the impact is huge. The tiniest seeds can sprout the most gigantic trees.
A reminder, this week we are going to draw moments of DELIGHT. We are going to use drawing (and our finders!) to look closely at the world and discover all the beauty and joy and magic all around us, waiting to be noticed right under our nose. Let’s start by looking at some artists whose work traffics in delight.
Delightful artists for inspiration
Maira Kalman (the GUT’s first-ever visiting artist — love you MK!) delights in the whole wide world around her. She photographs what and who she finds, and then returns to her studio to paint what delighted her. You can feel her delight when you look at her work.
David Hockney (yes, he whose pools we looked at earlier) has painted every darn day for many, many decades and has dedicated much of that time to delighting in nature, people, and his delightful wiener dogs. SO MANY WIENER DOGS. His work emanates curiosity, wonder, and joy.
Loveis Wise is an illustrator who works in digital and traditional media, and every illustration of theirs captures so much joy. The color and energy of their work — it’s a total delight to behold.
I share the artwork above not to tell you what to do, or how to do it, or even that you should like it, but to show you how a few artists use DELIGHT as a tool in their work. You can tell just by looking how the artists delight in their process - and in their subject matter.
Daily delights.
Every day, starting today, I will give you a general ”Delight Topic” to start you off, and if you have a different sort of delight you want to draw that day, DO THAT. No rules in art. You do you. What matters is that we look closely — maybe using your finder — and spend 10 minutes drawing (and writing a little) about delights each day this week. This daily delight practice is transformative, and results in wonderful work and experiences.
“But I can’t draw well enough!” - some GUT members, maybe you
Hold up, hold up. You know what I’m going to say to that. Everyone can draw. When I come up against that feeling that says “that’s not good enough!” I think of this talk that Ira Glass gave about the gap between what we want to do and where we are. Here, take a minute and listen/watch this:
We ALL experience that feeling. And the only way through is through. That means we just keep drawing. Even if it’s just a stick figure with a label on it.
We have a lot of different levels of experience and confidence in our community here. It’s one of the great things about us — we learn from each other and support each other, no matter where we’re at. Give yourself the gift of feeling supported by this group.
And remember: These 30-Days are NOT about doing a good drawing. If you want me to teach you to draw an apple, I can do that another time. What we’re doing here is using drawing to LOOK at the world around us, to SEE moments of delight, and to EXPLORE them through drawing.
Your drawing does not have to look “right” or “good.” You are welcome to draw a scribble with arrows and text on it if you want. This is about using our pencils to pay attention. Sound good?
So without further ado, let’s start drawing some delights. Here’s your first prompt:.
