Entries Tagged 'bad art is good' ↓

So, I’ve been thinking. About my glasses. And the fact that I sketch them each week and post the picture of that sketch along with one fact or idea about glasses.

And you know, there are a lot of cool blogs out there talking about glasses and even cooler blogs posting  sketches that have nothing to do with glasses but are amazing.

hmm.

Now, I know the whole point of my bad-art-is-good tag is to just get drawing no matter what and to reach my ultimate drawing dream-goal: to have a year or two’s worth of glasses sketches for a fat flip-book that goes from barely resembling my glasses to knock-out, wow, I could-take-those-off-the-page-and-put-em-on-my-face-for-20/20-vision-good. And to test the theory that if I draw my glasses every single day, I will get better at drawing them.

But here’s the thing about blogs, they’ve got to be interesting. And as I was sketching the picture below, I realized something.

I’m using the blogosphere as one gigantic fridge and sticking each sketch up as though it merits a magnet and a spot right by the door handle where you can see it just because I sketched it. I can remember having more grace  and less expectations than that with the drawings I made in kindergarten!  (Which were way better considering the cute element and the fact I kept drawing what I said were dogs in ball gowns).

So, I’ve decided to post one last sketch and glasses fact. Don’t worry, I’m going to keep drawing my  glasses and maybe in a year or two’s time, when I have that fat flipbook of  drawings, I will post again, but until then-

Did you know there is a patent for “Stud Spectacles“?

Which are, “Eyeglasses that don’t need a frame because they attach to body piercings on the face. Yeah”

Yeah!

Who is the most famous person to have worn or currently wears glasses?

Immediately my mind flips to a picture of Pamela Lee, circa 1995, running along a sandy beach carrying a floatation device and pushing her thick black glasses up the bridge of her zinc-dotted nose…wait a second, that never happened in Baywatch!  I figured her being noted as the most famous Canadian for awhile  means there’s gotta be something geeky about her.

But as any fan of Sloan knows, geeky is sexy, with or without the red bathing suit.

And this may be a strange intro for this week’s sketches of my own eyeglasses. But in a celebrity-soaked culture, whether on youtube or google street view,  on the tv or the big screen who is the most famous person to wear glasses remains unknown. Maybe it’s the last remaining tangible to be quantified in today’s fanfare. Maybe I didn’t search hard enough.

I don’t know.  But I’d love to hear who you think.

When I get to share some glasses sketches with ya and an eye glass fact…or myth…or both.

The term “rose-coloured-glasses” may have first been recorded in 1861 and used well before that (just think how long it took them to add the term “meh” to the Collins English dictionary). And “meh” is the opposite sound someone wearing rose-coloured-glasses would make. They would sound more like this:

copied from an article about Elton John and his many glasses at hubpages.com/hub/Gay-Celebrities

It isn’t hard to imagine Elton saying, yay!  And although you may think “meh” here’s some of my sketches of my hopelessly-not-as-outlandish-pair-of-glasses:

Now, I wear the same pair of frames for approximately a decade (it’s hard to let go) but according to Earth911.com, over 30 million people get new frames each year. And like most everything else, eyeglasses can be recycled.

The great news is it’s really easy to recycle your old pair of glasses, you can leave them with your eye doctor or if you’re in Vancouver drop them/mail them in here.

If you’re outside the Lower Mainland, visit here.

Each week I want to share the sketches I’ve made of my glasses testing out the theory if you do something enough you get better at it, and to just share a love of glasses! And what better way to spread love than with a story or a tidbit of interesting info?

So for this week, I want to talk about recycling glasses and there’s one local organization that has been doing exactly that for close to 15 years.

TWECS: Third World Eye Care Society of Canada – started in 1995 with a 100 bucks, continues to be 100% volunteer-run and refurbishes 1000’s of old eye glasses for people who need them. I love this pictures from their website. You can volunteer there too.

Picture copied from TWECS homepage: www.twecs.ca

(That’s how I feel about my glasses!)

Now time to reveal the sketches for this week…I’m hoping in 15 years time, I won’t be able to tell the difference from the sketch and the real thing…ok, maybe in 20 years…

Eyeglasses.

They’re like typewriters.

I have a hushed reverence for them and the nerdiest of glee comes over me when I see a pair of frames that stand out.

In a decade when contacts lenses can almost wash your dishes and corrective eye surgery is getting more affordable, you’d wonder why eye glasses are more popular than ever.

I don’t.

There is something poetic about them, like rock n roll when it digs underneath that Death From Above 1979 t-shirt you’re wearing.

So in regards to my love of eyeglasses, I’ll make a sketch of my own pair each day and post weekly.  I started drawing sketches of my glasses in 2005 and will include a couple of those below.

The whole point of “bad art is good” category is to just create for the love of creating so be warned, my eye glasses may look like a scribble or a tupperware container ran over by a monster truck in rehearsal, but no matter they’re made with love.