Remembering what I once knew…
One of the best parts of peeling back the layers of the onion, of slowly getting through the build up of residue that once formed a major mental block against drawing, is that I am slowly starting to remember things that I once knew but had forgotten due to disuse. After about a dozen and a half water color paintings Rhoda kept texting me saying “I think you should get yourself a drawing pad and start drawing.” She didn’t know that I have about 20 or 30 unused drawing pads that I bought on clearance at Pat Catan’s about 10 years ago. I bought them at the time when the Archbishop sent me to California to meet Fr. Patrick D, a monk who is the best icon painter in the western hemisphere. The message that Fr. Patrick had for me when I met him was simply this: I want you to start drawing. I asked the monk what I should draw and he said it did not matter, he just wanted me to draw. When I came home I bought this huge stack of drawing pads with the full intent of using them. I didn’t. Sure I did some drawing, but not to the degree Fr. Patrick wanted me to. I couldn’t. I was blocked creatively. Being blocked creatively also didn’t stop me from amassing a collection of at least 3–4 copies of each shade of drawing pencil and various different charcoal pencils, which were all sitting in a cigar box waiting to be used. Rhoda did not know about any of this, but she was gently insistent that I start doing some pencil drawings.
One morning I decided it was time to just draw. Not do a face like I had done over the past year or two, but simply draw. Draw with no set meaning, no intention, draw like I used to do when bored in grade school. As I started to draw and work my way past the remnants of the mental block that I once had against drawing I began to remember just how much I loved to draw when I was younger. At first I was using mostly the “b” grades which are softer grades of pencils. B grade pencils are softer pencils and make a darker color. They blend easily using an old dirty eraser. It took me a while to remember how to remember how to use the “h” grades which are harder and have a much lighter tone to them. Getting a lighter tone on the H grade pencils took a much more gentle drawing and blending approach, which I also began to remember. Through the process of doing these half dozen or so pencil drawings I began to remember that in high school art class we learned all about the grades of drawing pencils and how to use them and I began to remember that I once was actually quite good at this.
NB. The face pictured is from a photo shoot that I did in December with the model Rian Nova. “Misha” is Russian for Mike, a name that Fr. Basil S gave me shortly before I was chrismated in 1999. Thank God for friends like Rhoda who gently remind you of what you need to be doing, and Nick who has always been so supportive of both me and my work in art (both icons and otherwise).
