the Process of finding Perspective
Working on my art Bali project has been a process of enlightenment and growth. I started out on this trip by having the goal to kind of lead my own personal Drawing 101 class for myself throughout the month. I had huge plans of learning how to draw the human body and of learning how to essentially transfer images that I imagine in my head to my pencil on my sketchpad notebook. I wanted to record and transpose real life pictures onto paper and be able to see how I perceive reality. I wanted to realize how I see things — Which details do my eyes catch? What kinds of things do my eyes miss? Is there a pattern to what I see or choose to see? The main question that I was and still am asking myself is: How can I and do I naturally capture and preserve what I experience?
As the days started passing at Pantai Mas, I began to reevaluate the likelihood of going about teaching myself how to draw in a matter of days or even weeks. I started in on one of those first days perched on the wooden platform near Mimi’s cage, and while I had a little one-sided conversation with the monkey, I outlined her face and attempted to recreate her humanlike features on my sketchpad. Of course, it did not turn out to perfectly resemble Mimi, however I gained a bit of confidence after studying my sketch because it did, without a doubt, look like a monkey ☺
As I began sketching more and more of what I was experiencing and seeing, like the sunsets at Pantai Mas, the dolphins in the Java Sea, and the pollution that can be seen everywhere, I realized that the theme of my project had become less about getting down particular figures or objects, and more about perspective and how I was incorporating the little details into the main breadth of what I was looking at. I began focusing on the little things and how they fit into the bigger picture or whole. Working with perspective and thinking and being aware of how I look at things in Bali is the new and improved overall goal that I have been working toward during the process of creating my first ever college art project.
Still, I also must acknowledge that searching for and realizing my personal perspectives is a life-long project. The importance of maintaining an open mind throughout my experiences and travels is real, and it is the only way to grow as a human being and citizen of the world.
