There
are a lot of ways to learn how to draw — as many, in fact, as there
are those who draw. But only
two kinds
of tutorial seem
popular.
Online, it is
the “How to Draw Something” tutorial video
or article. In
schools, it is the “Practice
Drawing this
Something Until You Have Attained Enlightenment,” with that
“something”
usually being a tablecloth.
There are rewards and
pitfalls with either approach, but they have left me wondering if
we’re missing the point.
With
the “How to Draw Something” approach, it would be
reasonable
to assume that
you would only ever learn
how to draw that one “something” from that one angle, in
that one style, and with that one type of shading. But in practice,
these limitations don’t seem to exist; plenty
of artists have learned from these tutorials and can draw much of
what they want.
With
the “Practice Drawing this Something” approach, it would also
be reasonable to assume that you would only ever get better at
drawing that one tablecloth
that you
were ogling for hours. But
this seems even less true than with the “How to Draw Something”
approach; still life and figure study have yielded some of the best
results in improved drawing ability.
Why
is this? Well, I’m not
quite so senseless as to really wonder why—
it’s
obviously
the extra stuff that
you learn alongside the subjects
of those tutorials and studies that really seem to impact how well
you draw. Couple those
little revelations with an understanding of the basic framework of
art, as well as a
problem-solving mind, and you
will at least be
able to outperform all of
those other people that gave up and say, “I can’t draw.”
I
am interested in that extra
stuff. In fact, I am
interested in how I learn
and have learned that
extra stuff. Art can be a
life-long journey, or it can be a few
minutes worth of curiosity. For
me, it’s the journey.
Think of this place as a
companion to study with.
You
can sit down, draw, and poke your head over here to see what I’m
trying to learn. It’s
not always going to be pretty, successful,
or helpful. But, if you stick around, maybe you’ll learn something
with me.
