365 Drawings

Jess Hale from Brooklyn, New York is making 365 Drawings...


Why did you decide to do this project? I completed a graduate program in Illustration in 2005, and weeks later I landed a gallery job in New York City where I've been working ever since. I went several years (about 5) where I didn't have the willingness (or perhaps courage) to draw. The daily drawing blog was a last ditch effort to revive this dying studio life. 





How has doing a yearlong/daily project affected your life? (feel free to include some specific examples of new/unusual things you've experienced)   I think it changed my relationship with fear and how it affects the creative process.  Through this 365 project, I began to more objectively see the ebb and flow of my creativity. I used to be terrified of the ebb.  Now I feel like I can ride out the ebb, and there's a flow right around the corner.  And that next flow is not going to be anything like a flow of the past.   Also, the creative ebb is not a scary monster who will take away my ability to draw.  This has helped me to let go of expecting myself to  "be really great..  like that one time, when that one flow was sooo awesome!"  I think this fear of the creative ebb had me in the aforementioned place of not creating anything for 5 years..

Another result is that I'm less precious about the things I make, and I'm a heck of a lot quicker on my feet when it comes to ideas.   Not knowing what the next drawing will be has been an amazing exercise in letting go of control. There's also a humor in what I do now.. and maybe this was there all along, buried in fear - The rhythm and urgency of the project has had a squeeze effect - extracting out the most authentic parts of what I've been meaning to say all along.   I hated to word "Cartoonist"  before - but now I am starting to use this word to describe myself, and I don't mind it one bit!  (Granted, I'm new at it..  not always as funny as I think I am at the time)

I would like to join a writing group and begin the process of writing a graphic novel.  I don't know how that is going to look, but I feel committed to the idea, one day at a time!  I don't think I would have seen this as a possibility had I not gone ahead with the blog.   The blog has taught me about perception and possibility.  


See all of Jess's drawings HERE.

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