As Robbi and I were driving south to St. Michaels for our reading this morning, she confided in me that she thought she might be “getting better at drawing.” She has been studying various art process blogs and marveling at the many-staged process with which some illustrators approach their work. (This one careful fellow draws hundreds of studies before beginning to assemble his “final” version.) Robbi’s process involves getting agitated enough to pick up her pen, at which point she performs the art equivalent of an exorcism on the paper. What results is vivid and frantic and usually has little bearing on whatever it was she thought she was going to draw when she set out.
The less Robbi’s mind gets involved in the circuit, the more she tends to like the final result. But this impulse-based art doesn’t usually work when an illustration is being rendered for a specific format (must be 3″ x 4″), with a specific goal (sell toothpaste), or bound by specific limitations (cannot include a woman with freakish pointy boobs).
So Robbi has been trying of late to combine thinking and planning with the kind of freedom of line that makes her work feel like her own. The creation of week’s auction, Sudden Rain, included a stage in which Robbi made a pencil sketch which she then traced in making the final. This extra step results in tighter lines (as Robbi’s wild pen strokes are replaced with a steadier hand), but also a more carefully considered composition.
So if you want to get in on the early stages of the new and improved Robbi, here’s your chance to place a bid.
