Wrestling with the Canary

Birds are everywhere at the Tidal Basin in Washington this time of year — but no canaries today. The cherry blossoms are at their peak. It’s the one time a year I’m sure to make it completely around — you know, to the Jefferson and the FDR and MLK memorials. These latter two are far from a casual stroll on the Mall. More of a hike really.

Walls of rough-hewn stone with FDR’s quotes make up the basic structure of his memorial. As a visitor, you walk along and among them. One wall catches my eye — a giant relief with vignettes of the Great Depression, of soldiers and war that gives visual context to the words.

I take out a small sketchbook and (with a Blackwing 602 pencil) make a rubbing of a soldier’s face. And another. Quickly. Before the visitors behind me get testy.

Back home, I approach each rubbing as I would a drawing — the marks on the page are the start. Suggestive. I define a silhouette, then the lighting and edge quality to nudge this soldier into a sense of form. And I wonder, does a drawing that’s starts through touch (rubbing in this case) bring me more quickly to abstraction — to the idea of a soldier?

Drawing daily brings small benefits like these. Over time, I trust they’ll add to my craft and voice. Big benefits. So, the sketching kit is again in the backpack I’ll grab as I go out the door tomorrow. A little set up the night before goes a long way.

Last week’s oops-I-stopped-drawing-for-5-days thing was a canary in the coal mine. Resistance was back. Time to adjust habits. Happily, this week I drew every day and last night, turned in the exercises for Drawabox lesson 3 (I know you were wondering…).

But the crazy thing is — I almost didn’t. I looked over my work and it was awful. I managed some leaves floating on a page, some receding, some advancing, others turning. But when it came to drawing pages of potted plants, I forgot everything! In fairness, by page seven, I had reincorporated those leaves-in-space a bit better, but only barely. Wait! I can’t turn in this homework — the tutor is going to reject it. So before he can, I need to redo those pages. I even started redrawing some potted plants. No! I sent off my homework and went to bed.

This stopping just before finishing something is another canary. Seeing it for what it is (resistance) and confronting it in the moment is like suddenly wrestling with a dive-bombing canary. It’s small and agile, flapping wings, twisting, turning, insisting furiously. It’s impossible ward off, so I don’t try. It’s in my coal mine — the place where I do the work I care most about. So I put my head down and do my work. And the canary leaves me alone.