Professional Documents
Culture Documents
When I started college, I decided to major in art. During the first semester, we studied basic
drawing, using mostly blocks, cones, and spheres. This was easy for me, and my confidence grew.
In the second semester, we took our first design course. I came to class prepared with a new
pad of paper, erasers, and charcoal pencils. Our instructor walked into the room and gave us our
first assignment. He asked us to draw the inside of our mouth from the perspective of being inside
the mouth. We all looked at him, hoping of help or hints, but he said only that he would be back in
Some people (the true art majors) immediately began to draw. I tried to think how the inside of
my mouth would look if I were very tiny, sitting on my tongue. If my mouth were closed,
everything would be black. That was okay – I could draw blackness – but I was sure my instructor
wanted more than a black piece of paper. If my mouth were pen a little, some light would come in
and I would be able to see something – but what? There were teeth, of course, and the tongue I
was sitting on, and there was a little thing that hangs down from the top of your mouth in the
back. For two hours I stared at my drawing pad. I think I may have made a line or two, but nothing
that could be called a drawing. I never became an artist, but I did later become a linguist, and one
of the first things I learn was how the make that drawing.