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Getting In The Zone, Or SwimmingHeadDisorder?

by cooper on 4/20/2009 6:50:29 PMComment on this

Greetings,

Welcome to the Cooper studio. And I know you're all dying to find out if swimming head disorder is real, and the hypochondriacs amongst you want to know what the symptoms are. Ha! Calm down. It's just one of those -isms. It means you've got so much going on in your head that it's giving you that underwater sensation where everything is just hard to sort out and get clear. And maybe it's just a Nebraska-ism, used when I was a child. Bear with me a minute here.

Do you read the Empty Easel articles? You should. Even at the risk of swimming head disorder, which you might become susceptible to, due to the vast quantities of information available to you there. A regular writer at EmptyEasel, named Rose Welty, has been doing a series of article regarding resources for free online art education, "The Big List Of Free Drawing Resources, Educational Books, Videos, Podcasts, and More", which of course, is yet another opportunity to make your head swim with massive amounts of information.

One of Rose's references was to an online text The Practice and Science of Drawing, by Harold Speed, which I am currently enjoying. It's a great text by a colorful (make that colourful) author. His word pictures are quite visual. I am also going through (again) Advanced Drawing Skills, by Barrington Barber. Yes, those two, concurrently. I set myself up, didn't I? One of them made a statement about if you don't get it right in black and white first, it'll never be right in color. Which author said that? Darned if I know, blame it on swimming head disorder.

It can carry through to the easel as well, you know. The current on-the-easel-canvas is the lunch break scene. The canvas is a 30 x 40 inch, so it consumes me with size alone. Then there's the matter of composition, and am I on track with the values? Hey, one of those guys said it's got to be right in black and white. I decided it was time to back off, get a photo, and turn it to black and white. God bless the person who invented photo editing.

It's a life saver when you've got swimming head disorder. Regular people call it getting in the zone, or drawing on the right side of the brain. Ha! But I grew up in Nebraska. Stay tuned. I'll get this painting sorted out yet.

Later, Cooper

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