Let me tell you a story. The other day I conceived of a battle royal for my various pencils. I wanted to try to collect a few small drawings all on one or two pages and compare side-by-side what each pencil brand/softness was best at. Simple enough, right? As I've said before, I like me a dark, soft pencil, and so I commenced to drawing some portraits off Pinterest with similar lighting in an attempt to locate my truly darkest graphite pencil. It was meant to be fun. And it was at first. A nice change of pace. No pressure sketching... Or so I thought. I actually discovered that the Conte 6b graphite stick is perhaps the darkest pure graphite utensil I own, and that the General's Kimberly 9xxb was a rival for darkness but perhaps not graphite at all. It feels like a carbon pencil to me, so... ruled out of the race! Interesting indeed! And very informative for my never-ending pursuit of the darkest graphite to replicate my love of charcoal pencils but, well, in graphite. John Garfield was a breeze. Too easy. Gary Cooper... super-duper! James Dean came out like I could draw with my eyes closed. But it was soon into the Mongomery Clift drawing I noticed something happening. All my confidence weirdly shattered after just a few minutes. I realized the accuracy that usually comes easy for me just wasn't there. Odd. I couldn't see any proper angles. I had to measure. I haven't measured a face in ages. Couldn't figure out how to make the head big enough. Couldn't place the eyes, nose, mouth... My knowledge seemed to evaporate. I. Just. Couldn't. Draw. And the more I drew, the more I felt a sense of dread. Frustration. Horror, even. Am I regressing?! Athletes know about something called the yips. The psychological phenomenon where a skill you are highly practiced at suddenly becomes inaccessible to you. For some reason you seem to forget everything you've practiced and became so good at, and then the more you chase it, the worse it gets. Well, friends, this happened to me with good old Monty. I just... couldn't do it. I got off kilter and now I feel infected. I wheedled on that little thumbnail for hours (not the point at all of this experiment) before I came up with something that I didn't want to burn. But the worst was yet to come. I shook it off. So what? This stuff happens. Never bothered me too much. I went into my next drawing session the next day, confident as usual, and eager to combine my newfound knowledge of my tools into a sort of mega-portrait of... er... Ethan Hawke... using all my graphite pencils to just play. Except I picked up my Staedtler Lead Holder and froze. "Come on, just draw! Don't think!" I told myself. I tried. I failed. I started by making the head way to short and way to wide. Okay, fixed it... I thought. Nope. Still wrong. Okay, well try placing the features and using that to compare skull shape. Except I can't see them. No matter how hard I try, my vision is shot. I might as well be drawing a Mr. Potato Head. Even with a ruler, proportional divider, T-squre, and triangle I can't mange a decent likeness to save my life. So, I got mad. I threw all the aids away, grabbed a stick of compressed charcoal and just started wailing on it, resolving that if it's going to be a bad drawing, it might as well express something in being so. The process involved a lot of erasing and redrawing and mixing graphite in there and redrawing over it and scribbling and erasing again. Making marks that replicated my mood. Dark and frustrated and, of course, totally inaccurate and bordering on amateur hour. The energy of that anger was kind of wild, though. Kind of freeing to just let go and create something different. I don't really ever draw that way. I like my portraits to look like the person I'm drawing. Just the way I think it ought to be. But it was exhilarating. Like ripping off a band-aid. Painful and demanding, and sort of satisfying. Pretty soon I tuckered myself out. These are the results of that ride. You can see my progression from controlled to unhinged haha. The point is... There's a lot of beginners who experience "regression" and get mortified. I'm here to let you know everyone has problems with drawing. Problems they think they shouldn't have but get anyway. Me? I'm a fairly experienced portrait artist now, and I couldn't draw an accurate face right now if my life depended on it. And that's okay, isn't it? Even though I haven't drawn since finishing this dubious Ethan Hawke (more like a mutant Ethan Hawke combined with Jamie Hyneman haha), I plan on grabbing it and going at it again tonight. Maybe I'll be more careful, or maybe I'll go crazy again. Who knows? It's all just part of the journey of creating. Sometimes, things just don't go our way. Honestly, I kind of like what came out. This kind of barely contained pseudo-realism is pretty popular in galleries around my city, I think. Hmm... Makes one consider screwing up more often haha. Anyway. Take care. Just remember, we're all struggling together. Make something cool out of that struggle!