Drawing Conclusions

debs/ September 17, 2018

Some post-graduation goals I have: (1) run a half marathon, (2) learn to use power tools, (3) read, (4) write, and (5) draw. Am I having a quarter life crisis or do all my post-grad wishes sound like retirement hobbies?

I did end up running that half marathon (never again), but wielding power tools is still in the domain of wishful thinking.  Commuting 3+ hours per day is great for reading, and starting this blog is helping me (re)discover my writing voice. Drawing–the subject of this blog post–is something I’ve always enjoyed, and I don’t want to wait until I retire to make it a priority.

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How am I doing on this goal? I can’t say I’m drawing better, but I am definitely drawing more. But that’s not saying much seeing as this was the kind of dedication I put into my supposed-hobbies:

• In 2013, I got my first (and only) sketchbook arbitrarily when I walked past a tent sale at OCAD.
• I started drawing in it in May 2014 (after I finished undergrad).
• In 2016, I traded a chair I dumpster dived for a nice set of watercolour pencils (too cheap to buy legit materials)

Currently, more than half of all the drawings that populate my sketchbook are from June 2017 onwards (aka after I submitted my thesis).  (Granted, doodling sustained me through lectures in undergrad and lab meetings in grad school)

When your attitude towards your hobbies are characterized by cheapness and arbitrariness you get decent at doodling and digital art, and stay pathetic at painting and power tools.

Exhibit A: doodles for debbiedoodledoo. Inspired by Wavelength Division Multiplexing to get more information onto a single optical fiber, I doodle in multiple colours to embed more information on a single page. See, engineering is still relevant to me…

Exhibit B: compostable compost bin I dumpster dived this desk and re-purposed it as a compost bin. The plan: if it didn’t work out, at least the whole project would just get composted.  Ironically, this is the type of stuff one expects any engineering grad can do D:

Since graduating, I’ve been more motivated to change my ways. Signpost in the Shade was a pretty good catalyst for this (but even then, the “canvas” was dumpster dived and the paints were borrowed).

When I make drawings like these, it’s purely technical in nature. I’m studying how other artists do things or challenging myself to paint a reference in the style I envision. I just want to reproduce what I see in my mind’s eye; I’m not trying to say anything.

Yet even as I don’t consciously make decisions about what I’m trying to say, the amalgam of these drawings demonstrate what I am unconsciously drawn to (pun intended). They are outpourings of a subconscious self that desires to surround itself with whimsical scenes, care-free characters, and vibrant colours.

Fair enough, but I’m not satisfied.

So, this past month, I challenged myself to turn to my consciousness for more “original” or “insightful” ideas. But, I realized that as much as I want my drawings to be whimsical, the messages I resonate with are dark and cynical.

One may be tempted to suggest “combine the whimsical style you desire with the dark and critical things you want to say”–but that combination, in particular, requires waaaay more sensitivity, clarity, nuance, maturity and confidence to pull off than I have right now. My conscious and my subconscious are obviously out of phase, and the solution is not simply the superposition of the two.

In fact, I don’t necessarily think that reconciling what I desire to draw and I desire to say should be my ultimate goal. Maybe it’s okay–beneficial even–that drawing gives me respite from all the grievances I hold in consciousness and tangible access to the little nuggets of beauty, inspiration, and humor. Perhaps drawing is Grace.

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Drawing Conclusions

Writing and drawing have been parallel channels through which I am trying to find my voice.

In several ways, my voice was trained out of me under this modern iteration of “engineering” that cannot see “innovation” apart from “entrepreneurship”. In fact, I might go as far as to say that it co-opted my voice for the service of neoliberalism in my most formative years. Engineering is now the plaything for profit-making [1]. We engineers see ourselves as a rational, level-headed, neutral, and pro-social [2] species because the system works for us. Of course, the system works for us because we are in symbiotic relationship with those in power. We are rewarded power and privilege for shutting up and not questioning the origins of power and privilege, we are rewarded for not using our voice.

In Borges’ Library of Babel, there is a library of all possible permutations of characters that form the book. Writing feels like trying to make meaning from the arbitrariness in that library. But even with a potentially infinite string of characters, given finite grammatical rules [3], the size of the infiniteness of possibilities explorable through writing () is ultimately inferior to the size of infiniteness of possibilities in drawing (..?).

In a world where social, political, economic, and ecological imagination has been replaced with free-market capitalizing “innovation“, I hope drawing can be an opportunity to explore other Possible Worlds. Hopefully, I can find a voice in one of them.

And–should I find my voice–what/who will I use my voice for?

Tell a story, she told me. Don’t preach. Don’t try to sound profound. It’s unbecoming, and you do it poorly. Don’t show them your mind. Show them your imagination.

—The Truth About Stories, Thomas King

 

[1] Engineers were historically kind of subversive, revolutionary folk … but if you think about the “subversive and revolutionary” engineers today, are they not all entrepreneurial white guys?
[2] Note: Although many engineers would consider themselves “anti-social”, I think most engineers are “pro-social” in that they are socially cooperative and generally law-abiding citizens that contribute a net-positive benefit to society.
[3] Roger Scruton claims that painting cannot be reduced to grammatically significant parts