So, as I draw these, I’ve been listening to podcasts!  Yay.  I’m late to the podcast bandwagon; I’ve been listening through the webcomics weekly back log, and I absolutely love it.  So anyways, episode 56, Scott Kurtz talks about his fear of filling sketchbooks, about how, after about three or four pages, he gets too distraught by the lack of perfection that he can’t keep going.
I have the same fear of filling sketchbooks.  I will draw for three or four pages, and then I just get incredibly anxious that i’m wasting paper, because the drawings don’t look great, or i just get really nervous that someone will see the drawing and judge me for it, or crazy crap like that.  I mean, I drew on both sides of my sketch book pages for a long time, until my artist friends were like “…what are you doing?  your drawings are rubbing off on each other.”  I think when I drew on both sides, I felt better, because of some engrained message that I had learned in elementary school about using paper responsibly.  It’s like a big-ol crazy storm in this head of mine when it comes to filling a sketch book.  This comic was actually born out of a desire to get me to draw every day that my five hundred stock-piled sketchbooks, all 3/4 empty, were not fulfilling, and I’m really thankful for this comic because it has definitely made me better at drawing, and not just at cartoony stuff either, which i was pleasantly surprised by.
the crazier thing:  I absolutely LOVE getting sketch books.  Like, when I get one at christmas, i’m stoked.  I’m thrilled by the possibilities, and it’s only when i get a few pages in that i have a nervous break-down.  Working at a church only adds to my “sketch anxiety”.  I really couldn’t tell you why.  In college, i carried a couple sketch books in my bag and would just whip em out and draw on occasion… But NOW, it’s like, I feel like I have to have a fresh book, and start from scratch, and make sure everything in there is “clean”.  It’s not even like I draw inappropriate stuff; my fear is like, my hand will get bumped when i’m drawing proportions, and i’ll leave the thing open in my office, and someone will see it and be offended by it, and that’s just a headache!
I suppose I had that happen to me before… fresh out of Briercrest, I was posting my sketches online, (ironically, on a “blog” connected to my MSN account.  It’s ironic because, i mean, how long ago was MSN?  and this is still fresh in my memory?)  and I had a bunch of female friends of mine absolutely lambast me for my inability to draw female proportions realistically, and I think they even went so far as to call me perverted.  Was I?  probably, I don’t remember, i was like 18, but I remember being absolutely unable to articulate any kind of defence or even articulate thought as to why I had decided to draw such a thing.  I didn’t post any drawings online again until i was like, 22, and I definitely haven’t really sketched since then.
When I go home at Christmas, I usually try to dig out my old sketch books and check out my drawings from early highschool, when I would just draw whatever-the-heck-i-wanted-to-with-out-thinking-about-it.  Most of it is udder crap, but it was imaginative udder crap, and I really like it.
I guess I should try to sketch again, but i mean, i just get so nervous about dying and leaving a bunch of sketch books behind without me being able to explain why i felt justified to draw some of the stuff that i draw.  Sounds crazy?  that’s because it ABSOLUTELY is.
Even now, I get the heebie jeebies thinking about it though.