Non-linear

 A week ago, I drew a hand very hastily and badly. In frustration, I quit for a week. I started again today, and drew one about as good as the day before my bad attempt. Progress is not linear. It may be that I make no progress at all in a year, or that I already know how to draw the hand, but have to learn to get out of my way by not hurrying the process: making a drawing too hastily in the self-sabatoging belief I cannot do it.  

Hand

Here is day 10 of hand drawing. I'm seeing some shapes being more or less the right size proportionately. A tiny bit of three dimensionality. Sloppy details. Imprecise or confusing foreshortening above the second knuckle. I would say it's a drawing of someone trying to learn to draw. In other words, it shows a kind of effort that I like. For example, in the shape and relation of the four fingers to one another, in the shape of the fleshy part of the hand below the thumb.    

 

Hands in the key of C flat minor.

Thomas clued me in to Oliver Senior's instructional book on drawing hands several years ago. It is called How to draw hands, and the first sentence and paragraph is "This is an instruction book." I purchased a used copy and have had it around for a while. I recently did a drawing course on line with a delightful teacher, the Spanish illustrator Puño, who recommended drawing your own hand on successive days, so I am doing that now.  I'm on day four. 

When I look at the drawings, I see that they give me information. Most of the information is about how bad I am at drawing. I say this non-facetiously: I know what my hand looks like, and I know what a good drawing of a hand looks like, so I get very concrete, objective, and detailed feedback about where I've gone wrong. Once in a while, some small detail will be not horrible. I also know how much time and effort I've put into a particular day's work. At some point I will want to use and eraser and try to correct things and arrive at some less rough approximation.  

The thing about the hand is that we are familiar with it, we have a model close by (my right hand, since I draw with my left), we can draw it in real life size, or even trace in on paper, and yet it is difficult to draw all the same. That is, the difficulty is not due to a lack of familiarity, but to the fact that in some sense we are not seeing it as it really is.  

Since I don't expect myself to be able to do this well at an early stage, there is no negative emotion around the information. I could even give myself some jocular grades, like D plus plus or F triple minus or C flat minor. 

Marks on Paper

So I have broken down what I want to do in several steps.

*Make marks on paper

[I've done that]

*Keep doing it enough so that it becomes habitual.

[Yes.]

*Find something interesting in the marks I've made.

[Starting to do that]

*Develop some techniques or procedures for doing something of interest.

[Starting to do that]

*Define a particular project. It could be a series of visual poems, or a comic book.

*Actually do this project. Produce something.

*Publish or diffuse it in some way.

At no point does the question of something being good or bad enter into it. I prefer to think of it as interesting or not interesting. It would be fine to learn to draw realistically, etc... that may or may not be interesting, and "badness" would be synonymous with a lack or realism, right?

Shaving Brush

Things like this are not hard to depict. You can see a shaving brush, a nail clipper, a folding knife, a computer accessory. (I drew a thumb too as a point of comparison.) Once again, the drawings are quite crude, and it is easy to see what's wrong. With a minimum of effort I could probably do drawings of these objects that are about twice as good.

All children (apart from those with specific disabilities or conditions than prevent them from doing one or more of these things) sing, draw, and use spoken language. Drawing and singing become more specialized activities for adults, who will tell you they can't carry a tune or draw a picture. (What they usually mean by not being able to draw is that they draw about like I do.) Adults continue to use language too. The written language is accessed through academic training, beginning with learning to read and write. Being a good writer is like being able to draw or sing adequately, not in a childlike way. We expect a competence in written language consonant with one's level of academic achievement.

People who are not good writers often think they are. I don't think people who draw as well as I do think they are competent, but people are deluded about their ability to write well. I think it is because they cannot see writing as writing. They think of mechanics (punctuation); avoiding zombie rules (no split infinitives); ideals of concision & clarity (often badly understood), but they don't think beyond those elements.

I am somewhat ashamed of how badly I draw, because I think that everyone should have "college level drawing." What I mean by this is not being a great artist, or even having the level of competence of an average art student, but simply being able to pass an exam in which you had to draw a good three-dimensional depiction of a shaving brush.