July 24, 2009
Big rain last night. Very cool and wet out this morning. In the old days, before air conditioning, a morning like this must have seemed like heaven sent.

Got a comment on yesterday's blog regarding my quest to do 10,000 bad drawings:

"If you slip up and do a good sketch, do you count it or not?"
—Hugh Howard

I've done so many bad ones, when I slip and do a good one, I give myself the benefit of the doubt and count it as a bad one. Unfortunately, I did six really good ones last night. Probably the best I've ever done. They are really pushing the boundaries of my bad art experiment, but then, maybe that is the point of the entire experience:

Actually, I feel somewhat goofy talking about how good they are ("He thinks those chicken scratchings are good?!"), but remember, the main purpose for my quest to do 10,000 bad drawings was to find out how much I would improve over the course of the experiment. And my holy grail of rendering is the classic drawings of the masters I admire most: Rembrandt, Ludvig Holwein, Freddy Remington, Louis Moeller, Burne Hogarth and Charles Dana Gibson. These are The Guys, in my opinion, who really had it going on.

So, in that vein, these six bad drawings capture the style I most admire. Full disclosure: I sent a query letter to the New York Times and although it was merely an email that probably never made it beyond their firewall, I found myself repeating this mantra yesterday: draw as if the New York Times is watching. So, I worked on this page from the time I got home last night at six until nine P.M. Ha.

Speaking of overproducing, a photographer friend, Chet Provorse, sent me the following anecdote:

A Picture Is Worth A Thousand Pots And Pans?
A photographer is invited to a friends dinner party. He brings along some new images to show his host. The host looks at the photos and exclaims, "These are wonderful! You must have a very good camera." The photographer says thank you and the evening continues. After dinner, the photographer turns to his host and remarks, "The food was wonderful, you must own some very good pots and pans."

"First say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do.”
—Epictetus