Geoff McFetridge
Contour drawing has changed the way I draw. It was taught to me in college as a method developed by the artist Egon Schiele. It’s a way of drawing where you look at what’s in front of you and not at what you’re drawing. You also draw the shapes you see without picking up your pencil or erasing. The goal is to represent the form in line - no shading or any sort of interpretation of depth - just a line in the clearest most objective way possible.
The result of my first attempts were wonky drawings that looked like a pile of string. But inside each drawing there was a part that was just right, an eyebrow or hand that ended up like something I could never have intended to draw.
Drawing was also an introduction to ideas of improvisation and chance. Because I was not a naturally talented drawer, there were often challenges that would help me improve and go deeper in my understanding of what I was doing. I found that these solitary pursuits helped me advance and hone my perception of the world. Mental tenacity took precedence over technical perfection. In the beginning I saw this in drawing and skiing. Then there was skateboarding.
I remember I first came to skating through the curb. The curb was everything. My world of skating was microcosmic. My attitude was: if I could walk to a ramp or bum a ride to a bank, fine. But pick me up at my local curb spot because I will be busy doing nosepickers. Me and my friends spent time inventing, repeating and falling into new tricks. That’s the root of what skating meant to me: invention. Things changed over time, but skating was always there, in the trunk with a pair of shoes and some Rectors.
Drawing informed my skating in a big way. Skating and drawing are both abstract. Drawing is literally abstract, whereas skating is abstract in technique. What I mean by abstract technique is that as a skater I never actually understood how tricks worked. How does a smith grind lock so perfectly? How does where my head looks affect a tailslide? We know how to make tricks happen but most of what we do is done instinctively. Drawing requires a similar combination of confidence and tapping into instinct. Also, it seems clear to me that all tricks are inside you just as much as all drawings are inside you. Everything else on the outside is just in the way. I think we all have the memory of landing a trick the very first time we tried it. There is a similar feeling of doing something creative, and if it’s going well, it comes to you in a non-self-conscious way. In other words, it comes from within.
The Solitary Arts is about triggering the paradigm shift, about looking beyond the definitions of what skateboarding is, and what a skateboard is. Skateboarding is moments between tricks, it’s different boards for different skate spots, sometimes it’s trick-less; it’s about sometimes riding wheels that are not so hard and loud that you can’t hear yourself think. It can be silent no-tap ollies and carving in a way you can only do with soft wheels. It’s about a quiver.
We need to cobble together what skating means to us. The same goes for bicycling, skiing, surfing, paddling, climbing, painting, pottery, design and cartooning. We have to separate what we know about the things we love and what we have been told. Puritan versions of culture are the product of marketeers and lowest common denominators. Have a good time doing the worst drawing you ever did and a day without ollies can do you good.
The original story appeared in Huck #011.
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