Trent

For the past five days, I've been making it a point to make a small, quick drawing on paper that I scavenged in my last days at the New York Academy of Art. Shit that people left behind when they moved out of their studios. Some of the paper has been cold press Fabriano Artistico and some of the other, I have no fucking clue. Both kinds are very toothy, not my usual cup of tea.
I have found it surprisingly enjoyable and I've been using it as therapy in a way, to remind myself that I can draw and that I'm ok at it.
I draw for not too long, maybe three hours at most, without including breaks and I've been drawing from pictures that I've saved over time (and I mean fucking years and months) specifically with the purpose of drawing from them at some point. It makes me feel good to draw something just for myself, and this was actually advice given to me by an artist that I seriously respect and admire, named Abhishek Singh, he told me he always says that to his students.

So, yeah, it's been going on for five days, I really enjoy it, I have plenty of material to draw on for now, to keep doing this very hedonistic and satisfactory thing.

I very much enjoy and have enjoyed it since I kind of discovered it at the Academy, this process where, instead of just drawing the image, I kind of look for it, whilst I draw. Actually, I would say that I learned this mostly through a classmate: Matthew Comeau. This guy just beats the shit out of the paper and I remember looking at him and just being hypnotized.
It took me having a shitty midterm critique, when the winter break started, going into the last semester for me to try something like that and that's when "Lipring" happened, which I think is the first drawing where I tried that process and it was incredibly liberating.

So, I try to emulate something like that in these drawings and almost whenever I start a drawing now, basically. The drawing now is more like a search and a study and I draw until I find what I want to see. Erasing, correcting and drawing again, it is an incredibly enjoyable process.
Come to think of it, I think Dan Thompson's drawing is also a similar endeavor, so he definitely deserves some cred, too.

The last drawing I did, which was yesterday, is a drawing of Trent. Here you can see my reference picture and then the drawing.
The drawings that I've been making, I haven't really been meaning to copy the picture, just have it as reference and take things from the picture that I like: composition, lighting, features. That's why the drawings are based off of the pictures. With this one, though, I kept going back and forth and I couldn't decide if I wanted to copy it or not, I mean, it's Trent, why the fuck wouldn't I want to draw him and his beautiful face.

So, as you can see, my drawing is actually quite far from the picture, but I feel like it looks more "like" him than my reference.
And that stare and the facial expression in general, I like to think that's how he would look at me if I was drawing him in real life.
Or that it's the look I'd get before kissing him. Shy and serene. The drawing makes me think a lot of some pictures that I've seen of him and his wife that are taken very close to their faces and the pictures are very intimate, it's like my face is right in there with theirs and I can feel their warmth on my own skin.
These pictures ruin my life, obv.
They just resonate deeply, I guess. When I've been that close with a lover and I can smell his breath and we talk to each other with our heads really close, and I can feel his sandpaper skin versus the skin of the lips on my own face's skin and lips, and when you get close to kiss, their nose gets buried in your cheek. *SIGH*
So, the drawing makes me think all that shit and it makes me feel like this gif of Aladdin.