We all need positive reasons for getting on a creative path, and sticking to it. As I remarked before, there's often a false friend in our heads, making negative comments that can derail us. Even if we can't get rid of that all-too-familiar voice, we're going to learn to tune it out. One of the best ways to do that is to remember all the excellent reasons for taking up this creative pursuit and building it into our daily life.
Here's a list of seven unarguable reasons for drawing:
- Almost everyone can learn to enjoy drawing and sketching
- Drawing is a way of connecting more deeply to our world and what we see
- The brain-hand-eye connection is fundamentally human and physically and psychologically good for us
- Drawing is a meditative activity that helps us slow down and re-center
- Inspiration is everywhere
- Drawing is the ultimate portable activity
- Learning to enjoy and appreciate process is easier and more valuable as we get older
To expand on these reasons a little, let's take them one by one.
1. Almost anyone can do it. No, not everyone is going to be Rembrandt. But the basic skills of training one's eyes to understand what they're seeing, the brain to interpret that in two dimensions, and the hand to put it down on paper, is something that can be taught, and most people can get far better at it than they thought possible. It's not a question of tricks, but it's about paying attention to spacial relationships, relative size, shape and form in a new way. There are lots of excellent teachers out there, including on line, but the most important factor is practice. Furthermore, we can all continue to make progress: this is a skill that improves with practice forever. Furthermore, we live at a time when no one thinks that drawings have to be literal or super-realistic representations. You can develop your own style and forget about being judged against some universal standard. That's both freeing, and inclusive for a much larger proportion of people who want to do art.
30,000 year old painting of a hyena from Chauvet Cave, France.
2. Close observation changes our relationship with our world. When we look at something -- a walnut, a doorknob, our own face -- with the intention of drawing it, we simply see it differently. During the process of studying that subject, we connect with it on a different and often deeper level than we ever did before. We will never see that flower or tree or scene again the way we used to, and what we've learned about them through drawing will become embedded in our brain. That, right there, is a major reason why drawing is so valuable. Drawing changes the way that we see.
3. Drawing stimulates the brain in ways that strengthen the neurological system and can even help stave off dementia. It's also a pursuit that is fundamentally human, causing us to use and develop the connections between seeing, using our hands in a skillful way, and thinking. As our lives become more and more digital and less and less manual, we are in danger of losing fundamental aspects of human skill and behavior. Drawing, playing musical instruments, and making things with our hands are all brain- and life-enhancing pastimes not only because they create things of value, but because they touch something deep within the human mind and heart. What will humans be if these skills are lost?
4. It's meditative. So much has been written about the value of slowing down and doing meditative things that I'm not going to go into it here. Drawing puts me into a different zone: when I'm doing it, that's all I'm thinking about, and when I'm finished, I'm calmer because I have been somewhere unlike the daily routine.
5. You don't need to go anywhere special: the inspiration for drawing is all around you, in your home, your place of work, on the metro or busy city street, out in the countryside. We can draw everything from the smallest beetle or blossom to a vast ocean or mountain landscape: the scale and the vision is completely up to you, and it can change with the day or hour.
6. It's completely portable and inexpensive. How many cool things can you do with so little equipment? All you really need is a piece of paper and a pencil or pen - in moments of boredom, I've made many sketches on the backs of programs or napkins, meeting notes, the corner of a placemat. I've never drawn on pieces of music, but I've certainly drawn on the service bulletin or music lists in my choir folder during a less-than-exciting sermon. With a small sketchbook and some relatively inexpensive supplies, you can create a sketching kit that fits in your purse or pocket and can go with you everywhere.
7. Being older helps us to appreciate the process of doing something rather than judging individual results. Though I've been drawing since I was a child, I've found that I appreciate it for itself -- as a process that I enjoy -- a lot more as I've gotten older. I'm less concerned about making a great drawing every time, and more content to explore, try new things, experiment, and also just to document my world and daily life. When you have a regular drawing practice, the sketchbooks begin to form a record, like a journal, and that's very satisfying. The quality of the individual drawings is less important than the accumulation of knowledge and experience, and what those drawings say about your life at the time. But some of them do stand out, and you can look back and see progress and breakthroughs. I've photographed most of my sketches over the past five years or so, because I would really hate to lose my sketchbooks if we ever had a fire or flood, or if one were lost or stolen while I was traveling. I think most artists feel this way. Our sketchbooks are the closest to the bone: they're our private workshop, and hidden within them are often memories or coded, personal hints of whatever was going on in our lives at a certain time. The creation of drawings, over months and years, can become a quiet practice without pressure or angst, but with great personal value. For me it has aspects of spiritual practice; for you it may be something else, but it is on that kind of level, once you stop pressuring yourself to do it perfectly.
Thank you Beth. I bet your words could also be applicable to other activities too, i.e. writing etc. Hope you and J. are well and hope to see you two sometime soon!!
Posted by: Kathy Hughes | February 18, 2019 at 03:46 PM