Wednesday, October 25, 2006

The Lonely Catacomb

I have been teaching art at BYU-Idaho full time for the last 12 years. This semester I am on sabbatical and spend a great deal of time alone in a corner room in my basement. My wife calls it the catacomb. I have discovered that it really is more difficult to sit alone in a studio all day and illustrate than I thought. It really isn't very glamorous. This is something that illustrators we have visited with students have said, I believed, but never understood. Alone in an unfinished basement room. The walls: 2 cement & 2 partialy finished. Bare pipes running along the ceiling. The one blessing is that we had larger windows cut into our basement several summers ago and so I do have light. It can be a challenge some days. Alone means alone . . . except for the spiders.

2 comments:

Brad said...

I go through the same thing from time to time -- and I'm even in a sunny 3rd floor bedroom off the living room. Good music helps keep me motivated. Perhaps if you're stuck in there for the foreseeable future, you might invest in one of those mock sunlight lamps (you know, the ones that keep people from jumping off bridges in rainy Seattle).

Or an old neon budweiser sign, bought from the local tavern. : )

Perhaps stare into a flashlight every so often. : (

Good luck.

Mike Laughead said...

I always thought that all the illustrators keep going because they get in the "zone" and don't realize what is around them. I am actually unsure of this for myself because we live in a small place, the computer is in the living room, and my drawing table is in the bedroom, so I'm never alone.

(I also enjoy the company of spiders, and mose recently box-elder bugs.)