Doing Due Diligence

My husband often uses the expression “due diligence”. In fact, to be perfectly honest about it, he uses it so often that I tend to roll my eyes when I hear it. I believe in always doing “due diligence”, meaning — to my mind — giving our best effort, attending to necessary details, making sure we’ve checked off all boxes.

Well, I say I believe in always doing “due diligence”, but that’s catching myself in a big fib. When it comes to art, I don’t always do my “due diligence”. I get frustrated. I lack confidence. I find it easier to make a half-hearted attempt at a project and settle for whatever results I get than to focus, concentrate, and apply “due diligence” and still come away disappointed. Or, to put it another way, I’d rather succeed at a mediocre drawing than fail at trying to create an excellent one. In a perverse way, that makes sense. At least, it makes sense to me.

With today’s “shapes and forms” drawing project, however, I did do my due diligence, even though it might not look like it.

Yes, there’s an egg! There’s also a pyramid (four-sided) and one of those weird blocks whose geometric name I don’t know. It’s standing on its head — a flat, smooth angled cut. Maybe it’s referred to as a truncated cone. It is an interesting object, and my drawing set up made for an interesting challenge.

I thought a lot about persistence as I worked on this. If nothing else, this is an illustration of persistence. I visited the retinologist recently and got both good and not-so-good news. The good news is that the blood is breaking up and clearing away from the clot; the not-so-good news, however, is that the macular swelling has not decreased. It has actually increased, making treatment necessary. The treatment plan is pending with the insurance program, but if all is approved, I’ll return to the retinologist next week to have a biodegradable “sponge” implanted in my left eye. This little device will dispense a steroid, and hopefully that will decrease the swelling.

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The visit was also a bit unpleasant because of the “dye test” they attempted. I have what can only be described as “impossible” veins. The technician’s first attempt (inside elbow) didn’t work, so she tried my hand, and that didn’t go well, either. The dye leaked out under the skin — and it hurt! That dye really stings. This, however, was a better experience that the previous visit where 3 technicians worked at it and blew out a vein before the doctor himself finally completed the procedure. He assured me that the next time he wants a dye test done, he will personally do it himself.

I mention all of this because my vision is bothering me. It especially bothers me when I’m trying to carefully observe lights and shadows and the precise angles of lines. I’m not trying to make excuses here… just pointing out that the drawing process is not easy for me. That’s nothing new! Drawing has never been easy, but the vision problems have added a new dimension of difficulty to deal with.

Persistence means facing challenges, and my vision impairment is only one challenge. The others are more specifically art-related, so in keeping with all I’ve learned about developing a persistent mindset, I focused primarily on the egg in this drawing, asking myself what the exact problems were with my shading techniques. And I did my best — gave my due diligence — to improving those areas.

My shading problems are basically:

• I apply too much graphite so my shaded areas are too dark and messy
• My shading techniques are weak, so any shading I do looks splotchy
• I lack good control, so my shading sometimes extends past the boundaries, adding to that “messy look”

I worked first with one simple goal in mind: apply a VERY LIGHT layer of graphite. As I’ve come to see, a white egg is NOT white when it’s drawn in graphite, so I did my best to make one smooth, light layer of gray. You can see that I didn’t succeed in this, but the point is, I tried. I DID DO MY DUE DILIGENCE. I thought about what I was doing, why I was doing it, and how I should do it.

While working on the egg shading and thinking about light and dark, I recalled a famous anecdote about a music teacher — I did a Google search to see if I could find more specifics, but nothing came up. This was a story I heard as a young child studying piano, so I don’t recall who this teacher was. I only remember that he insisted his students play everything as loudly as they could. When asked why, he replied “He who plays fortissimo (loud) can surely play pianissimo (soft).” It was a humorus story, but actually it’s not true. There are many technical differences between fortissimo and pianissimo, and conversely there are many, many differences between light and dark in shading, which is where this discussion is going.

I’ve always been heavy-handed in art. While many art instructors stress the importance of “getting the darks dark enough”, I need to focus more on “getting the lights light enough”. It doesn’t work to paraphrase that music teacher and say “He who can draw darkly can surely draw lightly.” Nope, not true. Learning to draw lightly is a skill unto itself, and it’s one I’m definitely working on.

Now, of course, one way to produce lighter lines in graphite is to use a harder pencil. Right? Well, not exactly, at least not when it comes to shading. What happens in “shading” is that graphite is moved around, blended, and worked into the tooth of the paper. In order for this to happen, there must be graphite particles on the paper, and “hard” pencils don’t produce enough graphite since they’re composed mostly of binder and filler. Great for sharp, fine lines; bad for shading.

In order to shade we need to be using at least a “B” grade pencil, and in case you’re wondering, the “B” designation stands for either “black” or “bold” — take your pick. Each higher number indicates a higher degree of “blackness” or “boldness”, thereby making a 5B darker than a 3B, or a 9B darker than a 5B.

I used a 5B art pencil for my initial “light application” of graphite. Probably I should have gone with a lower B grade. My objective here, of course, was to try creating a light layer of graphite that could then be smoothly blended.

This led to a greater awareness of “shading techniques”. There are several ways: moving the pencil up and down, back and forth, making scumbling, circular motions. There are also different ways to hold the pencil. I tried different grips, different techniques. So, while my application wasn’t perfect, it was THOUGHTFUL. This wasn’t an attempt to create a great drawing; this was a learning experience. That’s what all of my 100-day project drawings really are — opportunities to develop various skills.

I worked, too, at better control overall. I’m always awed when watching video tutorials and these talented artists can quickly and easily fill in a square with graphite, never once going outside the square! How do they do it? I either come up short of the lines or go over. I often think that this must just be one of those “natural skills” that “real artists” are born with, or that real artists are able to quickly develop the skill. I’m not a natural born artist, and after ten years of “learning to draw” I am still challenged when it comes to neatly filling it boxes or “staying within the lines” while shading.

I did take my time on today’s drawing, first with using my templates and creating the lines as accurately as I could. I took my time as I began working on the shading. I was careful to use only clean Q-tips for blending. I tried different techniques. I made note of my problems. My hope is that today’s “due diligence” will lead to a greater understanding of the problems I need to correct and how I can do that.

By the time I’d finished the egg, my eye was bothering me. The lines on the pyramid and truncated cone were difficult to distinguish, so I just “shaded” them the best I could and did the best I could on adding the cast shadows, as well.

Yesterday my husband commented that my eggs were better than those I’d done the previous day. Maybe today’s egg is a bit better than yesterday’s drawing. What do you think?

My opinion? I don’t see any real improvement yet, but at least I’m thinking more about what I’m doing. I’m more aware of what’s wrong and now I can try to make things right. I am DOING DUE DILIGENCE, and in time, it will surely bring benefits.