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I’ve recently been reading an online blog by Mike Lee. [link] He is truly an inspirational, and thought provoking writer. In one of his entries, he talks about his ideal writing space. He goes into detail about where and what things he keeps near to inspire his creative juices to flow, as well as adding some commentary of is own to the mix. It got me wondering, what is my ideal drawing space? (Since I don’t write very much.)

First of all, I’d have to say music is a pretty big priority. There’s just something about that background noise with a catchy beat that allows me to just tune out everything else but what I’m working on.

Next would have to be a comfortable room. What I mean is that it shouldn’t be too clean, like science laboratories, but it also shouldn’t be too messy, however I do tend to lean on the cleaner side. (Nobody likes your current drawing to get remnants of other projects on it) Also the ability for it to have almost everything I’d need, from materials to reference material is also key.
I don’t know, I don’t think I’m too picky when it comes down to where exactly I’ll draw and where I won’t, though chances are, if I’m not familiar with the place I’m not going to want to draw there. That just decreases the comfort level of the place by almost half.

Something Mike Lee also talks about is how he loves writing with another person, a writing buddy so to say. A writing buddy, or for me, an art buddy. That’s something that I wouldn’t have thought of otherwise from just reading the prompt that he was writing from. Thinking back on it, it’s obvious. Of course there are drawing classes, but those usually have the unintended effect of making me less productive. Whether it’s from the abundance of annoying kids just trying to ride the system and boost up their pathetically low GPA with an easy A, or because friends, though I love them to death, can oftentimes be more distracting then even those annoying kids in class. Then there is me drawing alone in my room. I always keep my computer on with msn in the background. The fact is that I love the social contact when I’m drawing. It actually keeps me focused and allows me to work through my ideas with another person.

Case in point on a good drawing buddy: Last year in drawing. I didn’t have anyone I particularly liked in the class, so I just sat where the table was mostly free. Across from me sat a girl that I would end up having a bittersweet relationship with. Although we had many similarities ranging from having common interests to even having the same first name, our personalities were bitterly different. She was a glass half empty kind of girl, and more over disliked ‘having’ to do much of anything. She showed it during class by not doing much in class and almost never finishing any assignments. Now I’d like to think of myself as a glass half empty kind of person. On top of that I love the challenge of drawing. I think that year in drawing was more productive then any before it. Her lack of effort in class irritated me, but it did so to such a point that I was dead set on ‘not’ being like that. Although she didn’t know it, and probably still doesn’t, she inadvertently inspired to take on challenges with enthusiasm.
However by the end of the year we ended up not liking each other very much, we certainly didn’t talk to each other much, but she was probably one of the best drawing buddies I’ve ever had.

I think if I would be able to pick an ideal art buddy I would want them to have three traits. They’d have to be able to be quiet and at least do something else while I was drawing so I wouldn’t be tempted to talk to them instead of work. They’d need to be objective and have differing opinions then me. And the last is more of something I’d like, not really required, but for them to be visually appealing to me so that I wouldn’t mind drawing them when my inspiration temporarily runs dry.

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What's your ideal drawing space?