Artistic Ability Takes Work and Learning to See

For the final essay we are to answer this question: Can anyone learn how to
draw, or is it just a talent youre born with? Through my experiences this semester, I
believe that the answer is that anyone can learn to draw. I believe that it requires more
work for some than for others, but anyone with normal vision and motor ability can do it.
My experience: From the time I was very young I have always loved looking at
things. I did not usually draw them, because drawing was not my passion. My passion
was more in the looking. However, I did draw things sometimes. I drew them to
discover what they looked like. I was fascinated with small things. I loved insects. I
loved taking small things like a leaf membrane, or an insect wing, or a sample of pond
water, and looking at them under the microscope. This small world, I felt, gave me an
infinite amount of exploration to do in the old orchard gone slightly wild that was my
back yard. I believe that this gave me practice seeing from a young age. I never thought I
was good at drawing. I never put much effort into it. I knew, though, that I loved to see
and discover.
Fast forward twenty years: Art was not one of my primary areas of interest, so I
put off my Fine Arts requirement until it was one of the last classes I needed to complete
my general studies. At first, I signed up for an online art appreciation class, deliberately
choosing one that had a reputation for being easy and requiring little time commitment. I
was ready to be done with my associates degree. Before the first day of class, the teacher
had distributed the syllabus via email, and I had begun to peruse my new text book. As I
did this, I began to feel sick. This was not an art class at all, I thought. The opening
paragraph in the text book had such a vague and abstract definition of art that I could not

understand it, nor did I care to. The book was full of images that, to me, were ugly and
negative. I found that there was little regard for the great classical artists that I had
learned to love from the books I had read and the art I had seen from my childhood. To
me, art was about beautiful things, a discovery of what things look like, and what they
could look like. This class was not about those subjects. I decided to look into other
options. The only other option that I could work into my schedule was a drawing class.
This terrified me. I was afraid of the time commitment. I was also afraid that the class
would be full of people who had both more natural aptitude and more practice drawing
than I did. Unwilling to endure a semester sledging through the art appreciation class,
however, I signed up for the drawing class. After the drawing class started, I found that
many of my fears were realized. I am still glad I took it.
I am glad I took the drawing class, because it led me to the discovery that I could
learn to draw. I could learn to draw not just from a tracing of a photograph or another
drawing, I could learn to draw from life. This was so exciting for me. Although I was
not able to complete everything that I started to the level that I would have liked (because
of the pace of the class), I was able to do enough to know that I could draw and draw well
if I gave my drawing enough time and effort. I learned new ways of seeing and
measuring things that expanded my abilities beyond what I had before taking the class.
An example of how I learned to see in the way I needed to draw from life came
with the hallway drawing. Our class was put out in the hall and told to draw it. In prior
classes we were given instruction and practice on how to measure the different objects in
relation to each other and how to draw things into perspective. I was excited and
surprised with this new ability. This was not some abstract idea that I could not connect

with, this was something that I could measure. I could choose what details to include and
what not to include. This was something I could do.
Another exciting discovery for me was that there is a science to value rendering.
When there is a single light source, it casts shadows and reflects light in a predictable
way. The exercise of drawing a sphere led me to begin to understand what Betty
Edwards calls [learning] how to see (Edwards, 4). I began to see how anything could
be rendered, not just with line and going into perspective, but as values intersecting with
one another. I discovered that these values could be, in a way, measured in relation to one
another. It was similar to perspective and line drawing when objects are measured in
relation to each other. I discovered that I could see everything in a new way. Using these
tools, I found that when I took time to see and examine objects, I could eventually draw
them.
Through these and other experiences in class, I came to believe that anyone with
enough fine motor ability to write their own name can learn to draw. Maurice Grosser
put it this way, The painter draws with his eyes, not with his hands. Whatever he sees, if
he sees it clear, he can put down. The putting of it down requires, perhaps, much care
and labor, but no more muscular agility than it takes for him to write his name. Seeing
clear is the important thing (Edwards, 4). Thus, learning to draw is mostly a matter of
learning to see correctly. A person must learn to see objects and landscapes correctly (as
they are presently) in order to draw them. Some people seem to come into the world with
an innate passion for drawing and the in-born ability to see things in the way they need
to. Others, like me, have to work harder at it. I still believe, though, that it is a skill that
can be learned by nearly anyone.

Source:
Edwards, Betty. The New Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, expanded and
updated version. Copyright: 1999.