Drawing to me is like Yoga. I don’t mean “like taking a yoga class.” Think about Yoga as if you were one of its original creators or discoverers. That’s what I am getting at. Drawing, for me is like going on a journey that suprisingly leads to places I never expected, possibly to the edge of enlightenment itself.
When I draw, I tap into what yoga taps into: increased awareness and mind body integration. I become more alive, which sounds a bit trite, I guess. But it’s really true: I become more energized and physical. If I have been drawing, when I shoot a basket into the trash, it goes in. Or if it doesn’t go in, I know why. I feel it. I map out the space between me and the garbage can.
I become aware of my breathing, my posture, even my heartbeat. I can feel if there is negative energy trapped in my body. I know if I am dehydrated, or if I should eat or not.
I become aware of my chakras.
Art has a lot to do with the second chakra. I sense this. It’s kind of sexual. I think its natural for sexual themes to show up in drawing. I think it makes it better.
If I think of fantasy illustrators, or graphic novelists, if they are any good, like R. Crumb, or European comic book artists, like Serpieri they deal with sexual themes.
As a matter of fact, if they don’t draw anything sexy they are probably no good. I think really good rendering needs to tap into sexual energy. I am not sure what it is, but it’s like a force field or something: Its magic. Sex connects people. It’s very psychic.
Say, for example, a person is a pin-up artist. It has to be very sensual. The anatomy has to be accurate, though idealized. The way you do this well is to conjure up a beautiful woman in some type of psychic space. Then you draw her. She is there, you can feel her, you can feel every square inch of her body. Once you have created that, you just render her. You know if it’s right; you feel her. She is alive. You have created her. Rendering then is the easy part.
This must be how Frazetta did it.
He felt the women, sensually, and also the warriors in the act of fighting. He was a natural athlete himself.
Steve Heistman (C)
There is a mind body connection in rendering. I am talking about the masters, here. I sense they all are tapping into something very visceral.
Rendering from shapes, like certain instructional materials would teach, that’s all bullshit. People aren’t made from shapes, they are composed of living flesh.
This living flesh is the embodiment of an idea. It’s a divine idea. Its a dimensional hologram projected from the quantum field of pure consciousness.
Its spiritual. I tap into that.
When rendering animals or monsters, or other diverse types of entities, I shapeshift and then sketch how I feel through proprioception, which is the sense of how one’s body occupies space. I imagine how it would feel to have scales covering my body, or fur, and feel my muscles and bones filled out into animals forms.
Steve Heistman (C)
In rendering non-human entities, alien intelligences-I like to render the eyes first to get a sense of their psychic space; their energy. Then a body begins to materialize that corresponds to it.
To me the fun is in conjuring and interacting with these alien intelligences that seem palpably real to me and then recording the results in a drawing, commemorating the encounter.
Steve Heistman (C)
