Lessons Learned On The Quest to 10,000 Bad Drawings

 November 24, 2024

   What exactly have I learned on my quest to do 10,000 bad drawings? If you want to know the truth, three things stand out:

1. Hand-eye coordination is a muscle that needs exercise and the daily repetition builds a more solid foundation towards creating accurate renditions.

2. If you just start scribbling lines you will be surprised at how accurate your doodles are if you build on them and just "let it flow" and you don't start with a preconceived idea of how it should look.

3. Draw what you see, not what you think you see.

   Like most wannabe artists I have a hard time getting past my own foolishness. When you peel away the artifice and get to the motivation, what comes out in high relief is the desire to be admired and respected. Well, for starters, that's a damn foolish motivation for an avowed cartoonist! So, getting past the "hopeful admiration" part is difficult but the sheer volume of the task helps dissipate that desire.

Daily Whip Out: "Beyond The Artifice"

Context

   I was on a Southwest flight from Las Vegas (December 4, 2005) back to Phoenix and I had just had my eyeballs filled with Vegas showgirls and Siegfried & Roy (the mauling had taken place in 2003) and I was doing some prep drawings for a Classic Gunfight on the assassination of Ben Thompson in the Vaudeville Theater in San Antonio, Texas on March 11, 1884, which we were featuring in the next issue of True West magazine. So, all of those different topics ended up in this page of sketches done on the airplane ride.

Vaudeville Theater Shooting

   Drinking heavily most of the day, Ben Thompson strikes a porter on the train. When blood splatters on his silk hat, Thompson cuts away the crown and sticks a knife in the brim. Wearing his new, bizarre headgear, he steps off the train with John King Fisher to take in the sights of San Antonio, Texas. Ben buys a new hat before he arrives at the Vaudeville Theatre.

Daily Whip Outs:

"Study for Ben Thompson's Bizarre Top Hat"

   When I get on an assignment jag, I often spend numerous pages of my sketchbook noodling out scenes, like these which continued from December 9 until December 12th, 2005. 

   For the actual shooting, I combined two views on one page of the Vaudeville Theatre POV from the stage.

Daily Whip Outs: "Two Views to A Kill"

   Here is how the story played out in the magazine.

Forewarned & Forearmed

   So, down the rabbit hole I go, but does it translate into respect as an Artist?

"BBB's not an artist, he's an 'illustrator'."

—Billy Schenck