Of Subtle Shapes

When I started my sketchbook in April I’ve noticed a leap in my drawing skills, but recently it’s been stagnating. I feel that there are certain essences I can’t capture. Even when I’m getting the shapes closer to the original, it’s still never the same thing.

I think it requires a level of perception and mastery of my skills for the lines to fit in the subtlety that changes the whole identity of the image. These shapes so subtle are in the most beautiful things, and are much harder to achieve. They are in female curves, all the womanly beauty in their faces, lips and eyes. It’s in hairlines that require only one different shade of pressure or different angle for the whole thing to change. The vertices that show their nuclear identity are well-hidden.

I’ve been obsessed with making perfect straight lines with no rules or any other equipment besides the pencils scrabbling the paper. It’s the striving for perfection that makes me stop drawing things and just doing lines and lines. I wished to see how close I could get one from the other without them touching, or seeing how lengthy over the paper it could be before the faltering, and then trying making them several and parallel. Someday I have it the way I want to do it, but it’s the realization that the real challenge is in curvy lines. It’s much harder, and that my skills are more challenged.