My choice is made
I have had a difficult choice to make in last few months which will decide my final path in my lifetime. Stuck between the world of science, which I hold in a constant loving grasp, and art, whom I vacation with on a daily basis, I have made my decision. I started fall semester last month and one of my classes, that I purposefully chose to help me make this decision, was Drawing 1. The first project was an 18” x 24”, slow/modulated contour line drawing of a skeleton. My first attempt at it was going great. The anatomy was accurate, the proportions were there, and astoundingly enough my composition was chosen with precision. This was until I came in on Friday night to find that the still life had been moved slightly and almost correctly put back in place. It would have been fine, but because I was doing a zoomed in drawing of the rib cage from a somewhat 3/4 bottom up view the slight shift in the still life caused all the ribs on my page to now be inaccurate; therefore causing me and my perfectionist attitude to scrap it and start over. Was I angry, yes. Did I quit, no. I essentially said screw it, since no one’s in the room I’m going to do a super close up view of the skull in 3/4 perspective, showing all of the glorious detail. So I spent the next 16 hours over the next few days catching up and finishing my piece for the group critique on Monday. Now this is all the back story and may not seem important, but remember that I was already on the fence about art or science.
Monday comes along and the group critique commences. My turn to be critiqued. These are some of the student responses:
“This is a 10!”
“I want this on my wall!”
“It looks a little flat around the eyes.”
“Why do my eyes want to fly off the page, is it because the lines are leading it off?”
There were various other comments that I can’t remember but these are the ones that stuck. The comments about it being flat and the eye being lead wrong were absolutely correct. I corrected these in the next hour and got the following critique from the professor.
“This makes me want to go draw something!”
“Absolutely beautiful!”
“I know you want to go into medical illustration, but I’m going to turn you into a fine artist.”
The icing on the cake that concreted my decision was the professors audible sigh that one does when looking at something tehy truly enjoys I had made something that a professional artist and non-professional artists absolutely loved, and it was only my first project. So to say that I was blown away is an understatement. If I get my drawing back I’ll post it here. My final decision is art, and hopefully in the future I can have the pleasure of showing the public the way I see the world.
Edit: My professor is Crystal Wagner. Check her out at crystalwagner.com
