Monday, December 01, 2008

Just Wondered....

Just wondered, can any of you chaps actually remember executing a drawing?
Say if you look at a drawing you did a month ago, can you recall the experience of sitting down to draw it?
Personally I almost never can, unless I draw in a pub or sit and draw with a friend then mostly the time spent drawing is wiped from memory. Guess it's a trade off, a physical artefact to show what you did during that time but no memories.

8 comments:

SEAN said...

Interesting question Zeke... weirdly provoking. I can totally remember where i did most of my drawings & what was going on. Given my output, i'm kind of surprised that i can remember, but for most of what i've done, i can pinpoint exactly what i was doing & where i was while drawing. One of my favorite memories, if only for some funny stories is that i drew my first story "Queen of the Rats" while going insane in Baltimore right around Thanksgiving. The heat in the Punk House i lived in was spotty, i think my room didn't have heat maybe, & i was huddled in my sleeping bag, frequently working until dawn, sleeping until noon every day working on what was at that time "my masterpeso". I was listening to the first couple of Blackened Black Metal compilation albums & some Mick Mercer Goth compilation & talk radio.

Unknown said...

In my case, the more I struggle on a drawing the longer I remember them. There are groups of pieces that I made that I remember completely, even if I made them 5 or 6 years ago.

Aeron said...

Something weird that I've found is artwork that I leave unfinished and come back to months later, I'll often remember exactly what I was doing the last time I was working on it. The music or tv show that I had on in the background, what day it was, things like that.

Much of my artwork takes a very long time so I tend to remember those periods of my life when working on them. My recent Lovecraft digital work, I remember a great deal of the days working on that, from the sketching beginnings to the intense deadline crunching last few days where I was drinking lots of coffee, more than usual, and slamming keys on the keyboard and ripping the mouse around photoshop to finish the final details in the picture.

Newman Cruise said...

very interesting question.
years back it does become a blur unless something special happened. But it`s like remembering an old christmas dinner, it really does start to go vague. Should it not?
you mean you are surprised when you find something and you have no recollection? sometimes I find things I`ve forgotten I drew and it always makes me laugh for some reason.

I have music I listened to a lot when I drew things so they remind me generally when I hear them again. I made a post about that on one of my blogs:
http://mr-boobytrap.livejournal.com/2008/08/23/

zeke said...

Thanks for these interesting answers, I can appreciate you remembering that particular drawing situation Sean, it sounds rather hard to forget! Do you have any photos from that period? would be a very cool post to see both the photos and strip together.
Aeron and MD, that's so odd that you both can remember so much detail from when you did a piece, can't relate to that at all.
S'cuse the amateur psych routine here but you're both obviously up to the neck in your own sub concious worlds, it's interesting how your concious brain must be fully aware but not interfering in your work.
My own experiences are closest to yours Jon. Recently Crippa sent me a drawing we'd done we did together last year whilst in Holland and I honestly have no memory at all of doing it. Admittedly I was stoned at the time, but it's a weird thing to see something you've done but you cannot remember. This happens all the time, large chunks of life gone in a haze of squid ink!

Anonymous said...

I can pretty much always remember at least some of the circumstances around the creation of every drawing.

I imagine the difference between each person's answer is similar to how people remember or fail to remember dreams (and the level of detail retained). I had a friend that could rattle off every detail of his dreams like a movie he'd seen. On the other hand, I went to college with a lady that failed to remember her dreams to the extent where she claimed she didn't have any dreams ever.

Uland said...

Yeah, I remember most of it. I'm not that prolific though.

Paleo said...

I have a catastrophic memory, blame it on the Grey Cartooning Ones from Outer Space and their lousy page probes/rates.