September 28, 2025

"Sketching is an artist's ultimate enlightenment.

Constant sketching will...allow you to draw readily, articulately, and facilely."

--Drawn from Life, vol. 2. Walt Stanchfield

Do we want to talk about addictions this week? I'll tell you something no one knows about me, not one other person except myself and God--I think I am addicted to buying life drawing reference.

Not alcohol. Not smoking. Not drugs. Not even fancy clothes or shoes or hair or makeup or purses, like normal people. No, my addiction is pictures.

I KNOW I don't have the money for these expensive packs and I've already spent enough, but look, there's one more shiny one that I desperately want. Gosh, those movements are pretty, those fabrics divine. I love all the gorgeous reference, and I love the drawings that I'm learning to make from them. But I don't love the fact that I'll buy a pack of photos, print out the ones I want, add them to my already three-foot-high stack -- and then immediately want another reference pack.

I've never been amazing with money, and it's even harder now that the only job I could find this past year was part time and barely minimum wage. I go into debt each month just to buy groceries. I lay awake every night wondering how I'm going to get out of this never-ending money sinkhole that I'm drowning in. But I refuse to ignore my professional development, and the idea of investing in myself (ie, my studies) first--and right now, adding to my expanding reference file IS my professional development. My only question is, when does too much become too much?

It doesn't help that a) I get bored so easily, and b) I grew up in the pre-internet days when Encyclopedia Britannia was actually a set of real books with real paper, and weighed five hundred pounds. This was in a town with less then a hundred people, only one of whom was actually my age, and we never really got along. So. I'm still trauma-bonded to the possibility of having no internet, no money and nothing to do. And, "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure." Obviously.

The point of these drawings is to learn to do fast, loose figure drawings, a la Walt Stanchfield, in preparation for drawing for animation. As you can see, I'm still struggling with that. The temptation to render all the details, especially in the folds, is too strong to ignore. They're just so fascinating. I love the story that fabric tells. And isn't telling a story the entire reason for drawing for animation?