Photography - photography and drawing

"Mark M" wrote in message
news:yaVPc.16923$Oi.14539@fed1read04...

"TP" wrote in message
...
(Mike Henley) wrote:

I'm wondering if any of you guys do both photography and drawing as a
hobby, and what effect you find drawing has on your photography.

I do both drawing and watercolour painting as hobbies, and photography
for a living. My photographic composition has improved considerably
since I did a drawing course earlier this year (or so I am told).

Lets see some of your work, TP.

My ex taught art in a middle school for 25 years, perspective and compsition
were always taught early on in each class. One has to wonder what tp's
photos looked like for all those years before his "drawing" class.

I believe him. I'm experimenting these days with drawing using a Black Bic pen
on A4 sheets affixed to a cardboard clipboard. I guess i could use pencil
instead, and I had habitually used pencil in the past, till someone suggested
using a Bic pen because you can't erase your mistakes, and therefore it gets
interesting in how attentive you need to be. I don't plan to use colors anytime
soon.

I have not yet had a chance to reflect because I've only done one 10 or 20 mins
session of drawing since i started photography again. But I really want to do
more drawing to supplement photography. I find the two satisfy different needs
in me.

Photography so far has been an outdoors activity for me. I go on photo walks
that last a couple of hours on average and in them I could walk miles, thereby
an exercise and a breath of sun, open space, and fresh air, and I could take
routes i'd not explored so far just to see what could be there. There's a
feeling that you get in your late teens after you leave home and move to
another town, you just find yourself walking places, exploring, sightseeing and
etc. Photography brought back that playful curiosity to me. I had lost it for
many many years.

Drawing seems to be a more absorbing activity. It's highly, highly meditative.
It's almost like I go into a trance when I draw. I don't know what it does for
sure but it seems to do something to my brain. It's almost like smoking, but
even more pleasant. I feel it like a zoning out of time and a strange, warm
trickle in my musculature. Whereas with photography you just look and click,
with drawing you have to look and look and look and look. It's less about the
end results and more about the process. The end result, however good, will be
nothing like a photo. But getting there is a potentially frustrating, but often
very comforting process. Most of the drawing I have done is still life or
inanimate objects. I have not tried anything complex. Years ago I used to be
good enough to do quick portraits that were remarkably good and often amazed
people, but I have lost that as I've not practiced for a long long time.

I really want to get back to drawing as a daily habit and see how it affects
me. I know from past experience that it usually has a tremendous pyshoclogical
effect on me. And I'm sorta curious too, it being a visual act, how it'd affect
my photography.