Wanted: less risk management, more scary

June 10, 2012

June 7, 2012

Sort of not really Ada, and another James sleeping.

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Check out the latest monsters by Aida Alves, an artist I first learned about when I ducked out of taking her anatomy course last January because I didn't think I could manage the homework. Little did I know that I was embarking on a project that would more than meet her daily drawing requirement, and blogging it, too. Anyway, I've never met this artist but I think her art demos her anatomy chops, eh? Look at this Dragon! Lizards to swoon over.

I haven't studied anatomy since I was a visual arts student at the Etobicoke School of the Arts in the '90s. Mr. Paulionis, bless him, had his teen students gather around a live model and draw her figure. Next, he replaced her with a skeleton, and we drew the skeleton on tracing paper laid over the original picture. Or maybe we did it the other way around. That's it. I do own Gray's Anatomy, and if you can learn by proximity, then I've absorbed a terrific amount of information the twenty years it's been wearing a groove in the bookshelf!

All this to say, I'm gathering the courage to sign up for her course this fall once I've forced myself to start giving some of James' milk by bottle and to carve out some time to <gulp> take this drawing thing to the next level. I love my drawings these days, but there's no risk. Di Brandt, poet and my Master's advisor, told her budding writers at the University of Windsor's Creative Writing program that we should write the scary thing. It's time to branch out.