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Tuesday::Jan 23, 2024

Void Learning

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very time I take time off from drawing, I seem to come back better than I left it. I have a difficult relationship with drawing, in that I've invested countless hours into improving my skill, but haven't quite found that state of flow that really allows me to fall in love with the work I'm doing. However, I currently have several students to whom I'm teaching art online, and thus I'm having to explain outright a great number of concepts that I only know intuitively. It's an extremely useful exercise, trying to make explicit and understandable all that lies implicit within you. So, I'm thinking about what it means to draw several times a week -- apparently, that bleeds overr even when I'm not practicing. It's good to know, and it makes me grateful to my students, bless their hearts.

It's not a novel notion, however, that we learn while not doing, just as we learn while doing. There's surely some kind of yin and yang to this, where the void complements form. I've seen it over and over in my life, though admittedly I'm no master in any of my pursuits. A time of rest, for the lessons to soak in deep; not to mention some fallow time for the motivation to get back into your craft can creep back to life. Learning to ride these cycles is a great joy to me, and frankly I'm glad that life isn't just SAMO the whole way through. Breathe in, breathe out.