I am good at some things but not others
January 5, 2012Oh, you guys said some lovely things about my sketch-paintings. Thank you! My heart is warmed. Now I have Hot Heart Syndrome. The doctor said I'll be okay, as long as I'm not startled or upset, ever.
So listen, I would love to illustrate whatever, but I can't draw anything that isn't right in front of me. This is my terrible secret. Seriously, I have no visual memory. I can't even really picture what an elephant looks like right now, much less draw it. (It's gray! And…and looks like a briefcase! Wait, no, that's wrong. Four Ionic columns and a cloud?!) If I were to illustrate, I'd need to see everything I needed to represent. This could get tricky for, say, a children's book. "Listen, I'm glad you want me to illustrate Mr. Wubs and the Tricky Mubbles, but unless you get them all to my apartment and force them to stand still, I really can't do business with you. Yes, the Mubbles too. I understand they're tricky. Not my problem."
The End.
Changing the subject awkwardly: On Christmas day, my parents gave me a pair of warm mittens. They are adorable, in addition to being warm. (It was not the only gift from them. My parents are nothing if not overly generous.)
ANYWAY, after we were done gifting, my mom said, "By the way, the mittens came with a hat, but I think there's something wrong with it." She showed me the hat, which appeared to be perfectly acceptable and something I would happily place on my head.
But then I tried it on:
"You see?" she said. "I don't know why it looks so goofy."
"I can't see," I said. "I'm so confused. Everything is dark. WHY IS THIS HAPPENING TO ME." I stumbled around and my mom laughed a whole lot. I suspect this was a Christmas gift to her.
And then my sister walked in and said, "Yeah, you have it on backwards. Also, don't tie it, oh my god."
RIGHT.
This reminded me of this one summer in college when I worked as a bank teller, and I was terrible at it, just awful, and a fellow teller said to me, helpfully, "There are different kinds of smarts. You have book smarts. You just don't have…life smarts."
It took me this long to discover that I also don't have hat smarts. At least in this case I can blame my mom.
Reader Comments (34)
The hat is wonderful. You don't look like goofy with it. It's more like a tweety thing. Haha :)
- JAmes
I love the hat! You could start a new trend where I work. Of course I work with young children but I definitely think they’d prefer the way you wore it in the first picture.
And who could possibly think you don’t have life smarts?
LOL. I like the hat. I like how goofy it is (in the right end of course). Anyway, it's better to be good at something rather not being good at anything at all. :)
Visit from the Goon Squad!!! Life imitates art once again. It's astonishing, really.
I am the say way with drawing, it has to be right in front of me. I think my brain is like that for music, too. I could play the piano when I was a kid if I had the music in front of me, but if it wasn't, I could not play ANYTHING.
I really think I might love you. I am as straight as the graphics in a geometry textbook, but still. Alice! I love you! Marry me in a totally non-gay way.
Not that there is anything wrong with the Sapphic.
I like this post, it is funny and humorous, I like the hat style, very cute, haha, you are very adorable in that hat. lol
I am also a drawer-of-what-lies-in-front-of-me. I can recreate others' drawings with painstaking detail, but draw out of my head? Ha. No.
I am also not a hat person. Separated at birth?
I don't know if sculpting is at all your thing, but if you wanted to sketch a story about an elephant (say), you could do a little sculpture of said elephant in plasticene, so you could pose him and sketch him again and again, 'cuz he'd be right in front of you.
You can build little sets, too. So you could sketch what's in front of you. If this were something you wanted to do, but doubted you could.
If it sounds awful and painful, though, forget I mentioned it.