Day 4652: Sketching instead of Scrolling & Ella Abomah Williams.

    

"Target": junk collage, ink, digital.

  

Want music?

    

Click: Al Green, Simply Beautiful.

 

2GN2S

I started sketching & stopped scrolling

Fanny Johnstone: ‘I lose myself in the act of drawing.’ 

I’ve always battled with phone use. I resent how much my sense of being alive in the world – feeling it, doing things, making stuff happen – is affected by my screen time. So a few years ago, I decided to do a sketch every day.

I had always wanted to draw, but I was embarrassed about starting out because I was so bad at it. Then I bought a few black notebooks: a small one for my jacket pocket, and larger ones for my bedside and for the kitchen table. As no one would ever see my drawings, I decided I didn’t need to care about what anyone thought.

‘My favourite drawings are often of people.’

One day I grabbed one of the notebooks and a pencil and went out to the Cornish cliffs. I spent 10 minutes hastily drawing some cows and wild ponies. Standing on a cliff, pencil in hand, I felt like an idiot and an impostor, but I had started. It was a happy moment.

I had never drawn a pony before but, to my delight, one quick, simple sketch seemed not bad for a beginner. Next, I drew our cat snoozing. Then our dog, Foxy, staking out a mouse in our kitchen. Beside each sketch, I wrote the date and little notes. Having the pencils and sketchbooks within easy reach – in my car or lying around the house – meant these small moments built up. Within weeks what might otherwise have been buried in photos on my mobile phone became a tender profile of my life unfolding on pages.

‘Drawing with speed makes my self-consciousness fall away.’

My favourite drawings are often of people. Our daughter, Elizabeth, is often furious when she realizes I’m surreptitiously drawing her. Drawingstrangers at airports, in cafes or on the tube is fun. I enjoy the element of danger. Will I get caught? Can I finish the drawing before that person moves on? It helps to pass the time on long journeys instead of spending it on screen.

Lots of my sketches are dreadful, but the quickest ones – of people or animals – can have good results because drawing at speed makes my self-consciousness fall away.

‘Drawing makes me pay attention to the moment.’ 

One unexpected benefit of doing a sketch a day is I spend less time doomscrolling on my phone. Like most people, I am anxious about the state of the world, but drawing slows things down, makes me pay attention to the moment. I lose myself in the act of drawing, and I’m using my hands, which is soothing in itself. Drawing also brings me back to the analogue world. It makes me happier and more patient. Art is known for being therapeutic and transformative, and I’ve definitely felt the benefits.

In two years our daughter will be leaving home. In the future I’ll be able to look at those drawing diaries and think, yes, we were together when I did those.

This photograph was taken in 1900. The woman in front wasn't a nanny or a maid, she was one of the personal bodyguards of the King of Dahomey, an ancient West African kingdom (modern-day Benin) famed for its fierce female warriors: the Dahomey Amazons.

Standing over 2.5 meters (8'2"tall), according to reports of the time. She was said to lift a grown man with one arm and possessed strength and endurance that bordered on mythical. Her skill in combat was legendary.

Yet, colonial exoticism tried to reduce her to a spectacle. The British press wrote of her as though she were a sideshow attraction: "This dark-skinned beauty... will soon visit our major cities," they reported, failing to recognize they were witnessing not a curiosity, but a living legend.

Her name was Ella Abomah Williams — also well known as Mme Abomah, and history has largely forgotten her. But her story reminds us that true heroines often walk among us, unseen by those who don't know how to truly look.

Demura Sensei's Costa Mesa Dojo - Adult Class - 1992

 

  

 

A 2+ minute video, One String, here

 

 

 

  

 

Just because ...

American Kestrel

 

Thursday's Smiles ...