According to Wikipedia, Drawing is a form of visual art in which an artist uses instruments to mark paper or other two-dimensional surface. Drawing instruments include graphite pencils, pen and ink, various kinds of paints, inked brushes, colored pencils, crayons, charcoal, chalk, pastels, erasers, markers, styluses, and metals. I think we have to add iPads, too.
I have always loved to draw. As a child in Mrs. Ligon’s Kindergarten in Raleigh, North Carolina, we spent a good deal of time drawing—or what many would call “coloring” since crayons were the primary tool we used. Mrs. Ligon did not give us mimeographed coloring sheets but, instead, we had access to vast quantities of manila drawing paper.
I remember my time in kindergarten filled with creative play; we weren’t learning letters or numbers—or if we were it was done so subtly I never noticed—because you waited to learn those things when you went to school and in those days, school began with First Grade. In those days there was no public kindergarten. I am happy that things have changed and that all children have access to early learning (and playing) now. I was very blessed to belong to a family that had the resources for private kindergarten and valued learning at all ages.
At Mrs. Ligon’s, we played outside a lot, too. There were many plays, primarily produced for our parents. Some of our productions were very simple; others, like the Christmas Pageant, were quite elaborate. May Day brought dancing around the maypole—at least for the girls. There were swings and seesaws and an enormous teeter-totter; there was a little playhouse for the girls and a little log cabin for the boys. It was the 1950’s after all.
Indoor activities other than drawing included playing in the rhythm band; I always hoped I would get the cymbals or one of the triangles and not the mundane wooden rhythm sticks (of which there were an abundance).
I loved drawing. Sometimes there would be a theme. I was a reasonably accomplished drawer and once got into trouble when a friend asked me to draw one of my Halloween witches on her paper. My witches were quite good. I obliged and then was sharply scolded by one of the teachers for “coloring on someone else’s paper.” My friend did not confess that she had asked me and I did not rat my friend out either. My punishment (and here you will see that my kindergarten years were less than progressive) was I had to wear a pair of black gloves for a period of time (maybe even the rest of the day??) because I had “done something bad with my hands.” Yikes!
For many years my mother kept all my kindergarden drawings which she had put together into several books using brass brads. Later in life, I even made a quilt using a drawing I did featuring Jack and the Beanstalk.
Back to drawing…so yes, I was an avid drawer up until age 6. When I entered “real school” I fell in love with words as I learned to read and entered the world of Alice and Jerry and Dick and Jane.
We had our own library at J.Y. Joyner Elementary School and I did my best to read every book in that library. My mother used to take us to the public library as well. Libraries have always been magical places for me. Even today, Tom and I use our branch library on a weekly basis.
So words and books trumped crayons and drawing. In high school I decided to take an art class but I was not one of the teacher’s chosen artists so I didn’t learn much or get much attention. I did do some acrylic painting that I initiated on my own. I remember one painting I did of the blues singer Leadbelly and painted the words “The blues ain’t nothin’ but a low down shaken’ chill'...” encircling his head. My teacher informed me that words had no place in a painting. She was wrong but I didn’t know that at the time. I took it to heart that I was not a proper artist and that was one of my last efforts.
Post college I spent some years weaving, studying at John C. Campbell Folk School and Penland School of Crafts, and later, after Seminary, took several icon writing classes with Suzanne Schleck (an awesome artist and teacher), but I never returned to exploring drawing or other painting until about three years ago when I retired. After we moved into a retirement community that has several art studios and offers a variety of classes, I have explored collage and watercolors and pastels and colored pencils and zentangle and mosaics and more. I feel no pressure to be a “proper” professional artist but find that working in the art studio is indeed my happy place.
Our daughter is a very gifted artist and I believe our son is as well, though his days are filled with the demands of corporate work. I delight that my grandchildren love art. One granddaughter recently began discovering pastels and another is a whiz with ProCreate on her iPad; I hope to learn this, too, when I get a new iPad to replace my old dinosaur one. One grandson sends us wonderful drawings in the mail as well as being a master of the emoji. Another grandson created a stunning stained glass panel that sits in the window of their living room.
I find myself deeply longing for more instruction in the art of drawing. I seem to have met a fierce brick wall even from the retirement community in which “beginners” (definitely my category) are excluded from drawing classes. This fall I tried to take a drawing class at the community college but both classes were filled with long waiting lists before I could register.
I recently found a fun website called SketchBook Skool and a “101 things to draw” cartoon graphic. I am using that graphic to make sure that I draw something each day. So far I have drawn my left hand with my right hand, my favorite coffee mug, and my most comfortable pair of shoes (what else? Birkenstocks!). Until I find a teacher willing to accept a humble beginner I will keep on working to teach myself by just drawing every day.
I think we are a word-obsessed culture. And yes, me too! I love words. I wrote sermons every week for 18 years. This is my second blog I have written. I treasure each and every one of my OED (Oxford English Dictionary) volumes which overflow with words. But I think we all should give drawing and the visual arts a chance too. I wish that everyone drew at least one thing every day.
Writer Brenda Ueland shares this:
When Van Gogh was a young man in his early twenties, he was in London studying to be a clergyman. He had no thought of being an artist at all. he sat in his cheap little room writing a letter to his younger brother in Holland, whom he loved very much. He looked out his window at a watery twilight, a thin lampost, a star, and he said in his letter something like this: "it is so beautiful I must show you how it looks." And then on his cheap ruled note paper, he made the most beautiful, tender, little drawing of it.
When I read this letter of Van Gogh's it comforted me very much and seemed to throw a clear light on the whole road of Art. Before, I thought that to produce a work of painting or literature, you scowled and thought long and ponderously and weighed everything solemnly and learned everything that all artists had ever done aforetime, and what their influences and schools were, and you were extremely careful about *design* and *balance* and getting *interesting planes* into your painting, and avoided, with the most astringent severity, showing the faintest *acedemical* tendency, and were strictly modern. And so on and so on.
But the moment I read Van Gogh's letter I knew what art was, and the creative impulse. It is a feeling of love and enthusiasm for something, and in a direct, simple, passionate and true way, you try to show this beauty in things to others, by drawing it.
And Van Gogh's little drawing on the cheap note paper was a work of art because he loved the sky and the frail lamppost against it so seriously that he made the drawing with the most exquisite conscientiousness and care.
And this is precisely why I long to and love to draw. Because of the feeling of love and enthusiasm I have for the world around me, around us.
So find yourself a #2 Pencil (Ticonderoga’s are my favorites) or a box of crayons and a piece of cheap note paper and draw something. Anything. Don’t judge. Just draw. It will change the way you look at the world. It might even change the way you see yourself.
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If a restaurant offers crayons, I always take them and color throughout the meal. It beats talking to the people I came to dinner with. ― Stephan Pastis (cartoonist)
I cannot rest, I must draw, however poor the result, and when I have a bad time come over me it is a stronger desire than ever. ― Beatrix Potter
Hi Jeanne -
Oh I do miss you. And, I am so glad you draw every day. I was well into my 50's before I accepted that I could draw. And, I can learn more about how to draw. I follow Shoo Rayner on YouTube - he is a very gentle teacher and, if there is something I want to draw, I just search his videos and "poof", he usually has a video. If not, you can ask him to make a demonstration. I have never asked him myself. My favorite things to draw are trees and mugs of coffee.
Anyway, thank you for this blog. It is so sad that there was an art teacher who told you that you had "done wrong." My mom had one in elementary school. In first grade, Mom had drawn a tree and colored it pink. She was promptly told Mom there was no such thing as a pink tree. Obviously the teacher wasn't into abstract art ...
I spend more time reading than drawing. I think your blog has given me the impetus I need to spend each day drawing.
Ah, freedom! You express this so well in your love and journey with drawing. Thank you!