Drawing In The Mirror
Two practices speaking to each other
I make music, and I make pictures. Usually, these seem like very different things, but once in a while, they collaborate, and I get a song with colors or a drawing that sings, which is a reason to believe in magic. Here’s a little story of how drawing taught me something that helped me as a human, which helped me as a musician.
I fell in love with making linocuts in college, but I didn’t trust my own drawing skills. I tried tracing faces in order to get exactly the lines of their likeness, but I never really liked those images. They were stiff like a photo filter app. They showed exactly the shapes of an individual, but they didn’t show anything about the rest of us. I realized with drawing, just like with music, there is no such thing as the quick fix. It’s all about curious patient work, so I started to study drawing in the way I study music. I broke it down. I worked on finding the universal in a face: Blocking in shapes, and using a Loomis structure. I learned to draw the standard form of a human head with circles and axis, cubes and planes. Having an armature to work off of, I could focus on trying to make the features look like my subject’s features with my own linemaking. It always floors me how profound making an image of another person is. We are all made up of the exact same parts. The way those parts are formed and combined happens only once. It’s mind-blowing.
I want to find that place where the person I am trying to capture is present- they are unmistakable, but I also want to allow enough abstraction that other people can still see THEMSELVES in the image. It’s a little dance between realism and symbolism that I am always chipping away at.
I ran across an exercise from Wendy Mac in her Drawing Together Strangers Project. The actual exercise I’ve done before, Betty Edwards teaches it in Drawing On The Right Side Of The Brain. You make a continuous line drawing where you never pick up your pen or take your eyes from your subject. It was the context that Wendy placed the exercise in that made it hit differently for me.
Wendy sets up a table, two chairs, and a DRAW TOGETHER sign in public places- (parks, subways, cafeterias…) She then has two strangers sit and do that exercise for 60 seconds. They look closely at a person they do not know across the table from them and draw what they see without looking at their own drawing, only at the person. As I am sure you can imagine, it creates a moment of intimacy between people who would normally have just walked past each other. The drawing is silly and horrible. That’s the point. The experience is the art.
I started trying to do a version of this whenever I want to draw someone. Before I start thinking about the drawing I am actually going to make, I start with a 60-second continuous line drawing where I ONLY look at the subject (usually a photograph) and not at the drawing.
It changes the way I pay attention and puts me in a really different headspace to make an image from. It’s such a great way to drop into the right mood. It makes me notice and delight in their face without any worry about the thing I am trying to produce. The drawing is silly and horrible, again, that’s the point, but it gets me into my curious mind and out of my perfectionist production mind. It lets me connect with the person I am drawing first, before I start to worry about the quality of my own production.
I can then do a drawing where I allow myself to look. I block it out, but with a consciousness of the details that I want to make sure come through. It lets me go deeper than just “let me draw their nose” to “how is this person expressing a nose”. I try to make the drawing articulate the details that delighted me when I only focused on the face. I’m really liking the results. I’m having more fun drawing, and my drawings feel more alive.
I’m telling you this for two reasons:
I want to remind you that I am taking orders for my VERY AFFORDABLE custom linocut portraits! They make a great Valentine’s gift, and if you want one by Feb 14, you need to get your order in!
This drawing exercise helped me with way more than just drawing.
I bring up mirrors a lot, because they’re a truly great practice tool for musicians. They’ve been an important part of my development, helping me build better technique and showmanship. I’ve also had lots of folks tell me that they have a strong aversion to working with one because they really don’t like looking at themselves in the mirror, and I can relate. Some of us, maybe many of us, have a brain that has been trained to be mean to us when we look in a mirror. It doesn’t do much good to look at your posture with a guitar if your mind is insulting you.
I’ve been able to muscle through my hurtful self-talk, compartmentalize my music practice, and do it anyway, but it’s not always comfortable or intuitive. It’s like I can practice self-awareness on manual, but I don’t get very far if I leave it in automatic. I can watch my hands for stress, but I know what it is like to have to expend some amount of energy trying to keep my eyes on my form without looking at the parts of my face or body that I know are sticky.
I am an artist, not a therapist, and this is one of those places where art and therapy are kind of tangled up. I have worked with a therapist, and so I know some of the techniques and language we have tried to work with my own inner mean girl. I am 100% sure that a lot of the work I have done with a professional therapist set the foundations for me to be able to approach this tangle as an artist. If these types of things bring up feelings you don’t know how to control or make you feel unsafe, I STRONGLY suggest professional therapy to help you work through them. Proceed with self- awareness.
Just for fun, I tried doing Wendy’s drawing exercise with myself in the mirror. I didn’t set out to silence my critical internal monologue; I just wanted to see what it would feel like to draw my face as if I were a stranger. I’ve drawn myself many times, but usually with a photograph, and always to make a drawing. This was an art exercise, and like in Wendy’s project, I was drawing myself, and purposefully NOT making a drawing. There’s a really big difference.
I followed the lines on my face with my pen. I slowed way down. I looked close. I noticed. To my surprise, when I got to the places where my mind is often faultfinding, it stayed quiet(ish). No fanfare, just some observation without noise. When I finished, I was looking at myself in the mirror, and I was just looking. I’m curious about this magic.
Sometimes, making art is all about getting into a mood that facilitates it. So again, just for fun and curiosity, I tried this exercise as a drop-in for a week before I did any music practice with a mirror. I probably only took 30 seconds to draw my face, and then I picked up my guitar and played the thing I needed to play. I liked it. My attention felt turned on, and my chatter felt quiet. I could adjust for tension and get on with my life without wrestling the noise. I enjoyed watching myself play without(ish) a head trip. A little help for my artist self that also helps my human self.
I wonder if one were to do it as a regular practice, if it might wire the noggin to behave a little differently whenever a mirror appears. If it might be the right wand to use when shame, the kind that does us no fucking good, shows up and just gets in our way. If we might be able to look at ourselves with more fascination and wonder? If we might be able to be more loving and loose and silly and bold? Mirror, Mirror on the wall- might we cast a spell and heal something bigger in this world?
Use the code IKNOWJES for $15 off any linocut portrait.
I am bringing back linocut portraits! I had to pause last year to manage other projects- but I have some space for a few this winter, and I’m excited to build up my portfolio with some more of these.
To help launch my ETSY store and make human-made art affordable, I am doing a special on small portraits.
Use the code IKNOWJES for $15 off any linocut portrait.
They make a great gift for couples (Valentine’s Day! Anniversary! Engagements! Weddings!) Family portraits, Celebration of Life!
You send me some photos to work from, and I will carve and print an heirloom for your home. ❤️
