How to draw

When I run a drawing class, I particularly enjoy teaching people who say they can’t draw, or who haven’t drawn since they were a child. I usually start by encouraging them to think like a toddler.  

When a toddler draws, they’re not judging their efforts as they go along. They’re not undermining their attempt before it is finished. They’re not even limiting their colour choice according to what is realistic. They’re drawing for the sheer joy of making a mark on the paper, to create something that wasn’t there before.

Embrace your inner toddler. Enjoy the sensation of the pencil moving on the surface, the reverberation travelling up through your hand as the graphite leaves its mark. The swoop and sway of the line, the scratch and the smudge. If your drawing starts to go wrong, embrace the thing that you think is an error. Make it a feature. Artistic licence allows you to warp reality as much as you like.

I’m less interested in the realism of a drawn image (I’ll take a photo if I want an accurate memory of a thing). I love the diversity of marks a person can make on the page, the atmosphere created by a collection of scratched lines. How can something so simple be so profound?