What is drawing to you? Is it the act of self-expression? Is it an academic choice? Are you training to be the best artist in the world?
Drawing is many things to many people. For many people, saying you draw equates you with someone who is artistically inclined. And in lots of ways that might be true. Draw a line in the sand and it says “This is my side, don’t cross over.” Draw a circle around something and you say “These things belong together.” Draw a bunch of numbers and we venture into trying to understand the mind of God.
Drawing is an art form that for me is a means of self-expression. It’s a skill that requires time and attention. It’s one in which I “sit” down to put marks on paper that exemplify the limits of my skill. Many times I’ll start working with the intent to make a great drawing only to falter along the way. Other times I will practice deconstructing a concept of drawing. The line, tone, or texture of the marks.
I once had a teacher who told me that in China his teachers would instruct them with a principle that every mark they made should have 7 different qualities. Soft, hard, sharp, brittle, bold, light, and dark. I’m probably getting a bit of it wrong. But at least now I understand the principle better than when I was younger. Back then it was a technical feat which I thought was at the very least a skill which took years to master if not impossible for me. Today I understand it as imbuing your line work with a life and vitality that transcends the medium in which it was made and instead communicates the life of the subject your drawing.
That is a goal worth pursuing. The desire to communicate that which is ephemeral to the viewer, in reality is the desire to communicate something so ambiguous and delicate that no matter how many words we come up with it never seems to encompass the true meaning of what we feel.
Drawing on walls in caves, our ancestors communicated with others. I think it’s a primal urge. Is it no surprise it’s one of the first things we do as children? We’re given or grab something to make marks with, and away we go. We tell stories, we show others what’s important to us. I think somewhere in the process, it also allows us to understand the world around us. At first, things are just symbols, and later, as we learn more, they become dimensional. It gives passing moments solid form, and we stamp it into history. Whether it’s important to anyone else is up for debate. It’s important to us, though.
What we draw says much about what we look at, is important to us, and how we see the world. Drawing, in the end, is just telling stories to ourselves and the world around us.
