First of all, I’d like to point out that I am entirely unskilled at drawing. When kind people look at my drawings they say things like, “well, you know, there is no such thing as a ‘bad’ drawing.” However, I know perfectly well that every time I’ve ever muttered those horrible words about a poem the, “but yours would certainly fall into that category,” finish to the thought is left lingering in the air. Shudder. But, honestly, we don’t mean to infer ‘good’ or ‘bad’ categories, we mean to recognize the usability of honest effort and how it has an enlightening influence on the things you are truly skilled at doing.

The terms ‘good’ and ‘bad’ are base forms that work to stream our beautiful minds into quantifiable chunks. Nasty little beasts of cultural narrative. Erase them. Instead, consider how trying, even with the understanding that you will never be particularly skilled at it, will help grow the areas where you do excel. What the experience teaches you is more important than the outcome.

I draw because it heightens my skill of observation. Often, I don’t even look at the paper, I just stare intently at the object or scene that I’m drawing. Sometimes my pencil goes off the page, but that doesn’t matter, what matters is that I continue to show my mind how to consider shape. I practice looking at the space around the shape, not the shape itself, because this is how I write. For instance, in a story, you don’t show the love between two characters simply by stating that they love one another, rather, you express their love for one another by explaining their interactions – what happens in-between their love. In the same way, you draw a tree by considering the space between its branches, so that what you are actually ‘drawing’ is what you can see of the sky. It’s far more interesting, arresting, even, than just drawing a branch or saying, “I love you.”

Learning to draw the space around shapes is learning how to write the actions around an emotion. When we engage our best writing we are also poignantly describing human conditions that are as invisible as they are precious. Drawing helps me absorb a different set of tools to accomplish this, but you would never know that by looking at what I’ve drawn.

When I finish drawing and look down at my paper, I hardly recognize anything at all! But what I do identify is the observational sharpening that takes place the next time I am crafting a scene or explaining a relationship. So, approach new experiences without the need to master them, but for how they can help your inborn talents flourish.

Good luck x