Leggo My Ego

In our Q&A just now, Mark told us about this assignment he had back in school to draw a simple cube/roll-of-tape still life. The assignment itself was very simple, but they were set up with 3-6 hours of studio time a day for three straight weeks to work on it. So of course, everyone's laboriously polished their drawings and grown completely attached to their intricate work by the end of it.

Then they were told to.erase.their.work...every.single.line.

WOW. How's that for a lesson in getting too attached to a piece? Hitting delete is already so painful, how cruel is that to have to consciously erase every line?! That's waaaay too much time to think about it and let it sink in.

So uhhhhh, yea, while the class was cracking jokes about poisoning the instructor with eraser shavings, Mark talked about the importance of taking your ego out of the equation and getting to really incorporating direction into meeting the challenges of your piece. It's important not to fall into the traps of getting too attached to change anything or feeling so grudged against taking direction that you act like "Oh, you want the arm higher. There, that's higher," but to really understand how to take the direction you're given and build something out of that. Hahaha, ok, Mark described it waaaaay more eloquently and less obviously, but you get the point.

Man, I hope I never get that assignment.