Copying vs Freehand (without visual aids), a personal history

For some reason, I've never been able to draw freehand as well as I can from copying something in real life. It's always been this way for me, and I'm contemplating why that is because, well, I still don't know.

Two minutes after posting this, I realized that 'freehand' may be the wrong word!! All I mean is 'drawing without a visual aid'. Does anyone know a better word?

For example, when I was in first grade, the only 'real school' I ever had, I was given a blank bookmark to draw on, and for some reason, a Disney catalog, at the same time.
` On one side of the bookmark, I drew the talking Mickey Mouse doll from the catalog, along with Donald, Goofy and Pluto, who may or may not have also been dolls on the page, then added a stupid 'happy sun' and a rainbow.
` Pretty good for a six-year-old, huh?



That drawing was done, basically, by looking at the relative distances between the elements. Not only do I remember doing it this way, but there's also a comment among these papers from my teacher about my perspective-drawing ability; "Sarah draws what she sees, not what she knows -- table legs are longer in front and shorter in back."
` That is, indeed, how I drew pictures of tables in perspective, along with cars, and anything else that I was looking at.

But, in just plain freehand drawing, there is nothing to reference, unless you can visualize some picture just as vividly. I remember trying to do that when I was five, with an image of a rearing horse with wild purple hair, but I was never able to keep the image in my head long enough to draw it.

Moving on, let's look at the back of this same bookmark: I drew my own little scheme there, which unsurprisingly had to do with fighting and conflict and scariness, which were common themes in my life.
` Looks like the sun is freaking out because the duck pond with the winged frog is a battlefield for fire-breathing, laser-shooting cyborg monsters, which seem to have emerged from a most ominous cave.

Creative, yes, but the monsters are not nearly as well-formed as the Disney characters, presumably because I wasn't copying them from anything and thus, didn't quite know how to draw make them look realistic, which was usually what I was going for.
` I didn't copy very often, though, so I probably didn't notice this pattern back then.

Years later, when I was about 10 or 11, I was looking through a Christmas catalog at all the neat toys, and came across a photo of a puppy in one of the gift scenes. Since I was constantly drawing animals, I decided to copy it as closely as I could.
` I sat really still and did my best to duplicate the lines and the spaces that I was looking at, and the picture emerged:

That looks quite realistic, don't you think? At least, it doesn't look like a cartoon, which was how all my other drawings turned out, no matter how hard I tried.
` For example, this Mu-loo, a fictional animal I invented and loved to make look stupid and cute, could never have the realism I wanted:



It still looks like a cartoon because I never figured out what a 'real' Mu-loo would actually look like. In other words, drawings of real things could look so real because I was able to look at their real-looking-ness!

When the movie Dumb and Dumber was released in 1994, I was 12 years old, and I must have been attending the last year of my 'special' education.
` When I saw Jim Carrey's face plastered across the cover of Nickelodeon Magazine, I simply had to make one of my own in order to poke fun of him:

I was somewhat impressed with that, and so, I was always disappointed to find that the best I could do without a picture was cartoons! Here's a parody of the neurotic people who had abused me in the last year of my 'special ed':

I had been hoping for photorealism to some extent, but it seemed as though I were incapable of that. Was Jim Carrey just a fluke? Why was it so realistic?
` Later on, I drew pictures of animals, copied from TV and books -- here are the most boldly-striped species of the genus Equus, a somewhat artificial grouping, collectively called zebras:

I had trouble shading them, just because they're black and white, but otherwise, the stripes look 'correct' because I could just see how they went. However, I could not get the fictional hoofed animals, the Mu-loos to ever look like anything more than cartoons.
` Here, the Mu-loos have killed and stuffed their first pair of hunters, and have taken the hunters' trophies as part of their hunter-hunting re-enactment scene, with a 'hunter trophy' photo on the left, and at the table, Hunter Stew! (The end of the recipe is at top.)

That's pretty messed-up, isn't it? And I believe the two Mu-loos on the right are telling the story about how they bagged the hunters!
` Anyway, I tried my best to get everything looking like a photo, and once again, failed. I could never understand why sometimes my drawings looked fairly realistic and why they usually didn't, but at some point in time, I realized what the difference was.

Drawings copied from real life always looked accurate, because I had an accurate representation. But what of drawings from my mind? Apparently, my mind has just never been accurate.
` Today, at age 28, there is still a very marked difference between these two approaches. I wonder; is there any such way to stabilize an image in my mind so that a drawing from it looks like a drawing from real life? Would having a vivid imagination change that?

I can't say I've ever had a vivid imagination, because I was always being punished for thinking, for believing anything I saw in real life, and for playing 'let's pretend'. I remember always seeing the images in my mind shudder and warp, and for a while, I had none, save for dim memories.
` Perhaps that is the cause for this phenomenon? I don't know. I don't even know if psychologists have ever studied it, but I would be surprised if they haven't. Perhaps I will come across it someday.

For now, I'm just going to try training myself to see vivid images in my head, and we'll see what comes of it -- probably on this blog!

What fun! Drawings from my abusive childhood!

Hola! Qué tal? Boy do I have a huge art post for you! First, however I must say that I'm back in college this quarter, taking Spanish and am doing really well!
` My life is on track, and it's been two whole months since I've had abusive roommates stressing me out and occupying me constantly, which drastically had interfered with my ability to do school assignments.

Now it is so easy to just live my life! I am so happy now, living in a big house with a beautiful view of the sound, the best fiance ever, who is at this very moment on his way to film a TV show that he STARS IN called Dry Hump City -- and will also star in a hilarious feature film called The Boob, as long as it isn't picked up by Paramount!
` I also have the best cats ever, not to mention some easygoing roommates, and I'm planning going to go to my friend Ananda's Born-Again Trekkie Party tonight and be a huge geek!

It is ironic, then, that this art post takes place during my very first attempt at school -- that is, elementary school -- which only lasted until sixth grade when I had to be removed for 'behavioral problems'.
` These problems were assumed to have come from me, but as I well know, nothing could be farther from the truth.
` Now, having uploaded all the surviving drawings from my childhood, I was struck by how many of them from first grade alone portrayed what had been going on back then.

In this first-grade portrayal of my family and an anthropomorphic dog, can you see who the problem was?

It's very obvious. That's supposed to be me in the red dress, and it appears my mother and half-brother are protecting me from my dad -- look at their arms! I had heard about this exact thing happening in abused children's drawings, but I thought that might be reading too far into them until I saw this!
` As for the animals in the picture, that is one of our pet birds on my mom's shoulder (either Robby the robin, who loved my mom, or a starling), and what I used to call a 'half dog-half man' apparently being reluctantly pulled away from the rainbow.
` The okapi was evidently added when I found this drawing a few years later in a box, apparently because I would have rather had an okapi around than an anthropomorphic dog.

By the way, other drawings of my family show my mother being all by herself on the side and looking worried. Why was she worried, and why were they protecting me?

I think this says it all:

My dad put me through this all the time. He'd give me rules, and regardless of whether I'd follow them or not, he would punish me brutally. Even worse, when I would cry, he would start laughing at me, and finally, I learned to laugh when I was terrified of what was going to happen to me.

Did anyone at school think I was being abused? Well, it's clear I had serious behavioral problems:



'Twirling', 'hiding under desk', 'singing', 'bumping head', 'difficulty following directions', 'not paying attention', 'don't want to do it'... not only did I have ADHD, but it was ten times more difficult to function because I was terrified to follow anyone's directions since at home that always led to punishment that I couldn't escape!

I remember once being in the principal's office and I was so afraid of what my dad was going to do to me later that I started looking up at the ceiling and laughing. The principal, Mr. Leher, was so angry that he slapped me in the face!

I just wanted to be left alone!

I could not stand to see people who were happy to be with one another. Most people didn't like me and I was jealous of their happiness with other people, and constantly felt abandoned.

I wanted to kill other people who were happy and doing well. After my own family birthday party (I wasn't allowed to have anyone unrelated to me over), I was treated like garbage.

I just wanted to destroy everyone and everything.

I remember years ago reading Mrs. Padais' comments about me in first grade, which included the phrase; "Baby thunderbird crying because a monster ate parents." It must have been referring to this drawing:

What can I say? I saw other families being portrayed as having the parents being there for the kids. Not so for me -- my dad found every excuse in the world to punish me, and my mom seemed to agree with him, though sometimes she would protect me instead.

I was pretty suicidal as well -- I remember contemplating trying to kill myself by throwing myself down the stairs when my dad walked by. I told him I felt like I wanted to kill myself and he said everyone feels that way sometimes.
` I said, "Well, I feel that way all the time!" I thought if he was really my 'parent' he would ask why, but instead he called me a liar!

Nevertheless, my 'thunderbird' tried pretty hard to kill himself.

Needless to say, I felt trapped. Unfortunately, other people didn't seem to notice.

Also, I stopped using color in my drawings around this time. Why? I really didn't see the point in it.

It was a sad time, and it only got worse when I was moved into Special Ed, where the principal, Mr. Leher (who ironically followed me from 'normal school'), would also play a role in more physical abuse, i.e. helping Mr. Peterson drag me down the stairs on my knees, and then blaming me for getting hurt.

In fact, my life just got worse and worse over the years, between being abused at home and at school, and I had no real friends. Then, I was taken out of school and abused at home, full-time, and by then my dad was a psychotic mess.
` During the day, my parents would go to work and I would be alone, obsessing over whether my dad would kill me as he often threatened to when he got back home from work.
` At night, he would often keep me at the dining room table, sometimes until sunrise, telling me how awful the world was and how everybody was out to kill him, including me and my mom, but that I didn't remember trying to kill him because I was crazy.
` He told me that my mom killed her own father, and all kinds of other terrible things, so I grew to hate her until I was seventeen and she told me that my dad was crazy. I didn't have anyone to compare him to, but I somehow knew she was right, so I stopped believing him and started trusting her.

Was that the end of my problems? Far from it. In a way, my life still got worse from other things, especially being literally tortured and locked up in a place I thought I would die in.
` I was treated like an idiot for needing emotional support and abandoned by almost everyone, including 'therapists', my mother and my so-called boyfriend, who was utterly unaware of what I was going through, but still bought me an elaborate engagement ring despite my refusal to have a physical relationship with him.

So, for needing to straighten myself out, I was treated like I was weak and stupid and for years I just shut down. I felt that I wasn't tough enough for 'the real world' when really, those other people had no idea what I had been through and what it was like for me to have chaotic terrible thoughts racing uncontrollably through my head and no happy memories to fall back on.

I finally started to care about myself and taking control of my own brain in late 2005, and since then I have been working very hard to construct, for the first time ever, some happiness and order in my own thoughts.
` Since my crazy roommates (and other low-lifes) are finally gone as of this year, this is the first time my life's struggle seems to have entirely paid off.

It has been a very long journey. And now I live in a wonderful house, with a wonderful man, who is driving off to shoot a TV show as I type this. Probably next spring I will be attending the University of Washington to become a science writer.

Who knew this could happen? I would never have guessed.

There are more of these drawings, including non-depressing ones (which I'll get to next time) in the First and Second Grade Set on my Flickr account.