On Drawing

    I think children are born with the ability to think creatively, with a love for drawing and painting and making things. Unfortunately that creativity is wrung out of them in our schools, discipline and conformity being more important. Somehow that didn’t work on me.
I love to draw. I draw almost every single day. I can’t remember when I started drawing but by the time I got to first grade, my ability was well beyond my classmates. I never had any drawing lessons. I learned to draw by studying other people’s drawings; from comic books and fine art books. I studied anybody who could draw really well. My brother Rich and I had a little friendly drawing competition going in our grade school years. That improved our skills. My Dad was a draftsman by trade, drawing with rulers, compasses and protractors, and he taught me a little of that. Once in a while he would bring home a bunch of old blueprints on giant sheets of paper for us to draw on. His brother, my Uncle Bob, an aeronautics engineer, was a hipster jazz musician and modern artist, who I admired but he didn’t teach me any art skills either. I just remember really wanting to learn how to draw, and having no one around to teach me, I learned to teach myself. I could learn to draw by looking at other drawings. You don’t learn to draw by watching other people draw. It’s all in the marks on paper. Mort Drucker and Al Capp were early favorite comic artists, and Da Vinci and Ingress from the fine art world. Essentially, I learned something from everything I ever looked at.
Drawing saves a lot of explaining. It is a universal language. For me, pencil or pen on paper is not only an art form and communication method; it has enhanced my perception. You have no idea how little you see until you learn to draw. Take a flower for example. You put a flower, still on the stem, in a glass of water on the table in front of you, and you get pencil and paper. You see its general shape and the graceful bend in the stem. How many petals does it have? What do their edges look like? What does the center of the flower look like? What is the pattern of arrangement of the leaves on the stem? Is the stem smooth or rough? Are the leaves shiny or dull, round or pointy? Look closely at how the color in the petals has a tiny pattern to it. How did this bud unfold? Where are the shadows? The point is, you really have to look at the detail and things you don’t usually need to notice. You look for detail and patterns, light and shadow, and perspective. It’s not just how things look but how they behave. The way a person walks, the way a tree bends in the wind. Looking at everything as if you had to draw or paint it trains the mind to see subtle differences and detect patterns and just plain see with a higher resolution, so to speak, than most people. Anyone can train themselves to do this. If you do it long enough it just becomes natural.
Drawing isn’t just for artists. We also shouldn’t think of it only as “Art” with a capital A.  It’s a communication skill we should all have. I think drawing is as important as reading, writing and arithmetic. We should teach kids to draw as well as they can do those other three things. The thing is, they probably would just do it naturally but we’ve made them fear picking up a pencil to draw. They might make a mistake! It might not look right! Hey, you’re not Einstein, but you can do math. You can write but nobody’s expecting you to be Hemmingway. So don’t be afraid to pick up a pencil, they’re not expecting Da Vinci. If you can get your point across, you’re doing OK.
    I believe drawing is a fundamental skill for most artists. If you can draw, you’ll be a better artist. If you draw well, you’ll be even better. I believe that drawing is perhaps the highest form of the graphic arts. With just a pencil and paper you must create your image. You’re stripped down to the most basic of media with which to create your illusion. You have only your skill to make it happen. Yet there are thousands of ways to make marks on paper. It is a real test of ones rendering skills.
Now I use a ballpoint pen or marker because I don’t have to keep sharpening them. I buy my pens and pencils at “Back to School” sales and get a years worth of pens for a couple of bucks. Pencils are still great to draw with. Mostly I use plain old generic yellow #2 pencils bought in bulk. I keep a pile of standard office paper next to my desk in my studio. That’s where I draw ideas, doodles, cartoons and make notes when I’m relaxing in my studio. It helps keep me from getting rusty.