People who say “I cant draw!” or “I don’t draw right”
These people are the worst kind of people (not because they break the law) because if everyone turned into these people then eventually nobody would draw. Which would be bad. Very bad. Ever since I was young I was encouraged to draw and paint because my teachers and parents saw promise in the scribbles that I did from a young age. Just because I was pushed further to draw doesn’t mean that my drawings were ‘right’.
My friends were pushed to do more gymnastics or more football so when they saw the drawings I did they would always be those people who say the words ‘why can’t I draw like that?!’ a) Firstly because everyone draws differently and b) you put hours into sport not drawing! Surely it doesn’t take a genius to work out how you get better at doing something.
The conversation then turns to talent! People often think you must have been given genes that somehow turn you into the next Salvador Dali. It is as though you stood and waited in a queue for the ‘drawing’ gene that everyone else missed out on. Wrong. People look for excuses that if no one in their family is good at art or drawing then surely they can’t be either. In fact this angers me even more because I see it as an insult that the only possible explanation that would mean I could draw ‘right’ is if my mum and dad were good at drawing too not down to the hours of perfecting and sketching that goes into the one of the traditional art forms of drawing.
There are a million different phrases that these people say such as ‘it’s too late for me to start drawing now’ What does that even mean. They often say that they cant even draw a stick man. What does this mean? That your hand stops responding when a stick man needs to be drawn?!?! If you struggle to draw with your hands use something else… use your feet or your mouth there are a million other ways to make marks on paper?!? Many artists and designers over the years have proved this! The only thing stopping you from producing work is the fact you say that you cant do it? So many young people think that they will be able to draw through tutorials buying tablets and ipad’s. But this is exactly the same as buying an expensive car when you haven’t even had your first driving lesson. I agree there are people that can use a macbook or tablet to produce beautiful sketches but what happened to people simply using a cheap pen and cheap photocopier paper to draw, doodle, sketch and let their own work speak for itself rather using alt z to make every piece of work perfection. That’s not what drawing is about. There isn’t a wrong answer. It is up to the person in charge of the pen to say when enough is enough.
How do you define a right way of drawing?! How do you define a wrong way? How do you decipher an A* at GCSE from an A. We have been told so often that there is always a right answer, a right number, a yes or no tick box. Drawing is slowly becoming ignored, because people feel they can fail at it. Pushed to one side and no longer is seen as something that everyone can do. When in actual fact drawing is something we can all do. We can draw simple lines to make simple pictures it doesn’t have to be a photographic portrait using graphite and a technical ability that takes years of mastering. I truly believe that some of the most beautiful images are produced by designers who make things in their spare time and have no previous training, they don’t know ‘the rules’ within design. These people capture the expression and life that drawing can have in a childlike manner which is 100% not wrong. Drawing is entirely up to you. But never be that person who says…. I CAN’T DRAW. BECAUSE YOU MORE THAN PROBABLY CAN.
So maybe think twice.