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Skeptical?
For all of you who doubt you have even one creative,
as an Artist
Even "artists" - especially sculptors, "conceptual" and abstract artists - you'd be amazed how many of them, admit with embarrassment and shame their own lack of drawing skills! Why is this? "It's a gift" you say? That's sure what
a lot of people who can draw want non-drawers to think. But it's
not true. You can learn. Allow me this luxury: let me give you
in a nutshell, whether you can draw or not, your artistic history. In a nut shell, here's Your Artistic History... Drawing develops in stages, but most of us
froze in the "crisis years" around age ten or eleven, when out
of the blue, popularity, self image, "looking good" became frighteningly
important. And if you weren't good at something, or if doing something
(like drawing) brought you criticism, if it got you noticed in the wrong
way, more than likely you quit doing it, remember? To this day, for some
people, that's a natural reaction to trying anything new. Before
that crisis time, I guarantee you, you were drawing. So lets backtrack,
way back to the diaper days. This is still the stage where everything
either went in your mouth or on the floor, at age one to two years or
so. This was the same time (at about a year and a half) you started venturing
out. One day you were given, or by accident you picked up a crayon, or
a pencil and were fascinated that you could leave a mark. Your
mark. You were so fascinated with your new powers that pretty soon everything
became your personal drawing pad. You started to make marks on everything:
the wall next to your crib, the kitchen table, the freshly painted living
room wall (that one might of got you in a little extra trouble). You were
the original graffiti artist. (See Kyle
Kasbohm's sample of early scribble, age 18 months; Kyle resides in
Minnetonka, Mn.) These early years were an extremely fascinating time in your life. You were, while scribbling, also learning to talk. Making little noises at first, then a few words, then all of a sudden, single words gave way to whole sentences. And if you weren't talking, you were scaring your parents while you prepared a short graduation speech. (And then they could sigh in relief; There's all sorts of stories of kids who said nothing until they were almost 2 - then started talking full steam ahead with full sentences.) You'd been immersed in a "language bath" until then, and now it was time to pour some back. A "language bath"? If you were lucky, you were surrounded by loving parents, brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles, grandparents, cousins...all smothering you with words and attention. And a whole different part of your brain began to blossom: the dawn of what some have called "left brain dominance". Before this time, (age 2 or so) before you started using language, before you actually started speaking, you probably don't remember a whole lot. Why? Because you didn't have words and language to reference, to
bookmark if you will, your memories. Everything was recorded as sounds,
pictures, images and sensations. And they're off in a part of the brain,
or a mode of brain, where the currency is other than language. (Which
is why relearning to use the "associative brain" is so important
as an adult - but that's a whole 'nother topic down the road...if you
want to read more about either of these topics, I'll be adding books to
the Insider's Artist Loft Bookstore all the time so you can explore this.
back
to top) For a short while there you were pretty content with just scribbling. But then the next stage of your drawing career emerged. During this same "language acquisition period", you started giving your penciled or crayola-crayoned marks some meaning: circles became eyes, or heads, or mouths; little lines or hoof-looking things became fingers, hands and feet. A little bit of the imaginary world in your head began to spill out. Rather than scribble with abandon like you did when you were eighteen months, you began to draw with "intention" - that is you intended, you wanted your drawings to look like something. (See Charlie's "early man" sample, 11.3k)
What did you and that old Greek guy, Aristotle have in common? What was happening? In learning language you were learning to "abstract", you were putting things into categories, you were making generalizations. "Hands" have little squiggly things called "fingers" sticking out of them, feet go on the end of this sausage-kind-of-thing called a "leg" and everybody, generally speaking had these things. In both words and in what you drew, you were collapsing whole categories of experience - like figuring out "what do all hands have in common?" - into a word, or a drawn symbol. Just like the ancient Greek Aristotle. Aristotle was the "king of the categories"
(the big wigs in the university call it "taxonomy": the science
of categorizing every dang thing under the sun. Analytic philosophy. The
first four letters of that word pretty much describes the psychology of
these folks - no disrespect intended.) "Why was learning to abstract so vital?" Abstracting is a spin-off of our ability to reason.That's "Reason" as in "Rationality" with the big "R". And though we haven't talked about "Left and Right brain" functioning here yet, suffice it to say that reasoning and rationality, language and abstraction, among other skills are considered to be "Left Brain" or "L-Mode" functions. And things like drawing, spatial relations, music, intuition, among others is considered to be "Right-Brained" or an "R-Mode" function. (This is probably nothing real new to you. If it is you'll find an explanation at "Left Brain v. Right Brain" at this site) If we didn't learn how to "abstract", that is if we couldn't make generalities about things that are "sort of " alike, (like "hands" or "dogs" or "trees"), if we had to look at everything as if it was a totally new creation in the history of the universe, (which everything actually is) we'd never get past point "A". We'd never stop being fascinated with the world around us, and we'd be walking around blissfully stupefied or entranced all the time. (Just like the the apes were in "2001, a Space Odyssey", when they discovered the "monolith" - that flat black, 9 foot tall rectangular "thing".) All that might sound like fun until we find out first hand that it would have been much nicer to learn what a saber-tooth tiger "sorta" looked like - so we could avoid it - rather than discovering for the first and last time exactly what a saber-toothed tiger was like. So without the help of reason and abstraction,
we'd have been lunch for saber-tooth tigers. We'd also never be able
to agree that poodles, German shepherds, and huskies are all "dogs".
That "man" and "woman" mean different things (when
we hear the word "man" or "woman" we all picture something
somewhat different than even our spouse will picture - but we can still
agree what they, the words, generally mean). And that goes for
every word we use! If we couldn't abstract, we'd still be
in the stone ages. So thank God for the ability to "abstract".
And this abstracting thing we do with language, is exactly the same abstracting
we do in drawing our own symbolic version of things out
there in the world. Ages 4-5, The Story telling age So out of your compiled memories of hands, and faces, and dogs and cats and cars and houses, you constructed a "symbol" system. A visual "dictionary" of what those objects looked like to you, of literally your world. And, as child psychologists have pointed out fascinatingly, your relation to it. During this stage of drawing, you may have drawn your entire family, and expressed graphically your position in the pecking order. If your older brother or sister terrorized you, you drew them as giants with big teeth, and long claws grabbing at you. Your drawings told a story. (back to top) Ages 5-6: Landscapes,
When you composed At this stage you placed a yellow round sun in the corner, maybe with rays, a house in the middle, a door with a handle, you and your family in a row, all smiling. You had a sense of order about your drawings, a natural feel for composition. You were a Leonardo da Vinci, a Picasso, and a Hemingway all rolled into one. Then,
at age 10, the Dawn of Realism, and sadly, Then came the stage of "realism" at around age 10 or 11. At this age kids don't give a hoot about being "creative". Heck no, they want their pictures to be real; they want their pictures to look like what they're drawing. Boys want their planes to look like planes, blood and guts to look like blood and guts, bombers to look fierce. And girls want their bunny rabbits, babies and angels to look soft and cuddly, rainbows nice and round and colorful. Picture composition goes out the window. Kids know at his stage there's something wrong with the old symbols, and they'll work feverishly drawing picture after picture of the same thing until they get it right. (See Patrick McGrath's - of Minnetonka, Minnesota - realistic masterpieces, age 10)
When Popularity Became Important. And another thing started to occur here: kids start to develop a pretty strong self image. If they didn't add up to match that self image, well you know what happens: kids give up anything that doesn't match that self image. They get self-critical. So this is another critical period: when kids start developing a self image, and popularity becomes important. And in the case of drawing, unless the child gets, or unless you got some encouragement, you probably didn't continue. And you probably got little encouragement unless you did it well. So you dropped it. Quit drawing. And more than likely, you never went back to it. (back to top) Now I'm not a psychologist, and I don't even know if I got the order exactly right - but those are essentially the facts. If you can recall or find some of your own childhood drawings, you'll see, it's true. And it doesn't matter where you grew up: Asia, Africa, Atlanta or Alaska. The stages pretty much march along in order like that... ...Unless of course you could draw great
football players, cars, and rockets, (if you were a guy), or you drew
hearts, rabbits and rainbows, if you were a girl. (Of course, those aren't
exclusive categories, just pretty general trends.) Back to the year 2000 - Who needs to draw? Who wants to draw? Curious thing is happening. Just seven or
eight years ago graphics arts department, advertising companies, publishers
all asked this question: "Can you draw on the computer? Can you do
computer art?" If you couldn't, they passed you by. Guess what? At
a recent "Open house" at UCLA's Graphic Arts department, the
number one question asked by prospective employers: advertisers, publishers,
graphics companies, was not "can you draw on a computer?", it's
"Can you draw?". Period. If you could, you got the job.
That's just one, economic reason people might learn how to draw. And people
draw for all sorts of reasons: to make money, for relaxation and renewal,
for fun, even as a form of therapy.
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