Put a button on it: A chimp on my drawing board and a call from an old friend

The drawing has been sitting there unfinished for a couple of days now. I’m in DC this week. Our apartment is tiny, so I walk past and glance at it a lot. I’m starting to feel badly about how this drawing is going to come out — I see all the poor decisions I’ve made already. And I’m focusing on how tough this will be to fix, to finish.

About this time, I get a call from an old friend from my MIT days. We spent an entire year sharing an office in the N-52 Building, one of those cavernous spaces given to doctoral students writing their dissertations. Our writing seemed to be taking forever. Every day we talked about our work, our hopes and worries. That experience forged a lifelong friendship.

This night’s call, she asks after the Ham story I’m working on. How far along is it? What do you want to do with it? I talk about starting to feel badly about how the project will come out and how I’m focusing on the complexity involved in getting it done. We talk about format and how to approach it.

Then, my friend tells me how she’s changed from our dissertation writing days — in one particularly important way. She now strives, at whatever she’s doing, to work fast. To get on with it and always focus on bringing it to a close. That way, she says, you improve your chances of getting to do more of what you value in life.

I know this to be true and a potent motivator. Back on Bainbridge Island now, returning to the chimp on my drawing board, I jot down what this drawing is about.

Remember, Caroline —

• It’s an exploration with your charcoals. More experience with your materials, trying new things. Taking risks — playtime. Black pastel and Nitram fine powder together. A brush with the powder for a gesture and outline. Working big, standing. This drawing paper — it grabs the pastel, not so much the powder.

• It’s time spent drawing chimpanzees and seeing your understanding grow. Today, you see more of what is off, like the eyes are too far apart and angry. But you see it.

• It’s an opportunity to find what makes a drawing — this drawing — finished. An opportunity to work through the decisions you’ve made, especially the bad ones. To find that “button” that brings it to a close — to try something.

And — get over yourself already. Finish the drawing. Post about it . . . no matter the outcome. Then you can take Charlie for a walk — the sun is shining and the Olympic mountains are out.

P.s. Note to self: In the theater, a “button” is a tool actors can use, often in their auditions, that help close in a unique way the scene they’re reading. It’s an ending, line or action, created by the actor that showcases their own personal essence as an actor. In visual art, I think it’s the same. So, with each drawing I’ll focus on including a “button” — that thing that gets me to my finish.