Christina Vantzou

Drawing is something I have been doing for as long as I can remember. Growing up, there were always art materials around the house, and before I could even walk I would accompany my mom to the Nelson Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, MO, where she taught children’s art classes. Sometimes I got to spend the whole afternoon there while she was working in the supply room of the museum’s education department. “Room A” was like heaven; I still have dreams about it sometimes. There was construction paper in every color, watercolors, tempera paint, colored pencils, oil pastels, stickers, stamps, shiny scraps of paper, pipe cleaners, glue and on and on and on—all sorted into bins that towered over me. I experimented with whatever I could get my hands on. Nowadays, going to the art store gives me the same thrill. It’s inexhaustible. I can spend hours in there studying the different types of paper and testing out all the markers, or searching for the definitive black drawing pen or that perfect shade of pink.

I was interested in many subjects in school but applied only to art colleges since I realized that drawing was the one thing I’ve done since day one of which I haven’t grown tired. Looking back, the most insightful period during my time as an art student came from a semester spent abroad at Edinburgh University of Art. This was where I made my first attempts at animation. The art program at Edinburgh offered a lot of freedom, which provided me with the time to sit down and really teach myself to animate. Drawing took on a whole new life through animation and, with a little help from the computer program, Flash, I started animating in the only way I could think of, by tracing scenes from a film, and frame by frame. Basically, this is the age-old technique of Rotoscoping that Walt Disney and his animators employed carefully and effectively in films like Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Working in this way made perfect sense to me because my process of drawing on paper had evolved in much the same way. Today, I begin by collecting imagery, mostly from magazines, old children’s books or films, then I trace the images onto vellum and redraw them onto paper with the help of a light box. Sometimes, too, I scan the drawings and continue to manipulate them on the computer. Mostly, though, I just use Photoshop to collage elements from different drawings together, or to add layers that make the drawing look aged. A preference for the old or vintage has also led me to start drawing directly on aged paper.

Drawing has taught me many things. It is a constant exercise in letting go and freeing oneself from fear and self-doubt. The quality of line in a drawing reveals all. The perfect simplicity of an effective drawing looks effortless, but what interests me is the interaction between the thoughts in my head and the gestures of my hand in making marks across the page. There is a tendency to let my thoughts steer the process, which inevitably leads to a visible tightness in the lines. It is when there is a true letting go of any preconceived or self-satisfying notion that the magic happens. When entering into unknown territory during the process of drawing, my brain starts to assert itself. "What are you doing?" it says. Moving forward at this stage, my brain usually gives up on the drawing. It simply doesn’t understand what is happening and says, "Well, this one’s ruined." Here, I actually feel a sense of disappointment, but, nonetheless, my mind withdraws from further interference and the drawing is carried forward to completion through a force of its own. A feeling of disappointment may linger but, after a few days and a fresh look, these drawings are always the ones I discover to be the real winners.

There is something in a hand drawn line that will never be equaled by other means. This is not to say that I don’t do my fair share of drawing using a mouse, but I really don’t know what I’d do if I lost the use of my hands or the ability to draw.