In short, BrightBird is a creative experiment that stated this year, 2022, as an attempt to get rid of my obsession to keep control on the drawing process and its quality. The long story is:
Although it started with the idea to revive my childhood hobby, making drawings, I soon remembered, while drawing again, why I stopped with it at that time. Back then, I gradually shifted from drawing from my ‘gut feeling’ (i.e., emotions, intuition or subconscious) to inside my head (i.e., rational or analytical). This resulted in a strong need to capture the real world as detailed and accurate as possible. The process was no longer spontaneous or intuitive. This got so frustrating to me as projects never seemed to end as perfection was never reached (What is perfection anyway?!) that I eventually stopped completely with it.
As soon as I felt that I went back to my old (childhood) self, I stopped and made a drastic decision (at least, for me): From now on, I would do it differently by step-by-step putting up more hurdles to prevent me to get full control on the drawing process. Hence, I got the idea to gradually introduce the following restrictions, each time I started a new drawing project:
- Just make (rough) sketches, not super sharp and clean drawings.
- Do not use an eraser and/or ruler. A pencil sharper and any kind of pencil are allowed though.
- Let the subconscious speak for itself (or use pure imagination), not copy something from the real world like a scenery or a model. Or, in other words, let my hand do its own business/movements on paper by not thinking of what I am (going to) draw(ing) by bringing myself first in a meditative state and then letting my hand do its magical thing on paper.
- Draw by setting the eyes to out of focus, which was very soon replaced by drawing without my glasses on: I have quite bad eyes. So, without my glasses, the world around me looks pretty misty to me. Here is a close-enough example of how I see the world without my glasses:
- Draw with the left hand instead the right one: Normally, I am right-handed. I have never drawn with my left hand before. Of course, I have tried to write with my left hand in the past, just for fun to see how that would work out. Probably, you did it as well. So, you can imagine that it was (and still is to some degree) not easy for me to draw with my left hand.
- One session should last only one to three hours.
Eventually, I have been using all restrictions at the same time, and the results are astonishing, if I may say so myself. Especially, taking into account that I was never good in drawing people or parts of the human body. Only objects or landscapes were easy for me to draw in the past. Sure, there are more or other restrictions I have (not) tried, and I will certainly keep on experimenting. But, for now, these six are the ones I am sticking to at the moment.
Hence, this website was born to share some of the best results with you. Watch how my journey goes along as time progresses. I will try to add more, each time, I think it is worth sharing.
Have a nice stay!
info@brightbird.nl