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Can Anyone Learn To Draw?

I was painting a pet portrait the other day as part of a "live Art" demonstration inside a pet store. The photo I was using for reference was of a cute little puppy called "Cokey", a black mostly and white Maltese Shihtzu cross. We thought of the name on the way to the pet store when we bought him after we were brainstorming names. My daughter Hayley had a bottle of Coke so she suggested Cokey, as we knew he was black.

Anyway I am painting this portrait of our lovely little pet of him as a young pup and a man came by with his daughter and commented on the painting that I was doing. He said something very familiar to me, something that I hear quite often. "I am the worst drawer in the world"!

When I told him that he could learn to draw he laughed and said, "No there is no way you can teach me to draw". I begged to differ with him but he was adamant, he could not be taught to draw and that was it.

In a sense he was correct, he could not be taught to draw, if his attitude was that he couldn't. There would be no reason for even trying to teach someone like that, who would be determined to prove the point that they couldn't learn.

Now if the same man had decided that he currently could not draw but believed that it may be possible then he could be taught to draw.

Like all things in life there is a technique for doing things. There is a technique to drawing.

It all begins by learning to see. Learning to see correctly by questioning what you are looking at.

Then follows the process of learning to make a mark on paper, or canvas or timber or a cave wall.

How difficult is it learn to drive a car? Ask my daughter Hayley who has just gotten her learners permit and is struggling to learn how to coordinate the gears, the clutch, the indicators, the steering wheel and not to forget the traffic. On par with learning to draw driving is a whole lot harder.

The myth that some people can't draw to save themselves is just that a myth. Think about how many people learn to drive and consider the very small number who can't drive to save their lives. Ok there are some good and bad drivers out there but driving is no question a difficult thing to learn. Drawing on the other hand, by comparison is not.

Look, question and make your mark. Repeat. Keep looking, keep questioning and then you are ready to make another mark.

This is drawing at it's simplest.

Hope this helps in your quest to learn to draw!

PS. If you want to see how the painting turned out, you can click here to see the pet gallery portrait of "Cokey".

More next time, cu later.

Artist Intelligence of an 8 year old

Do you remember the fun you had back in infant school when it was time to bring out your paints and pencils to draw or paint something?

Remember the fun of getting the paint to do all sorts of cool things?

Well it was probably before the age of 8 that you had the most fun with art, that is unless you were one of the lucky ones to be held up high and praised for your artwork.

If you can remember the way things worked out it was probably something like the following.

Good artwork got praise from the teacher and other classmates, and the rest just got ignored. We all love to praise things of beauty and when it comes to a painting or a drawing it is no different.

Did your drawing gain praise or ridicule? Did you do the drawing of the teacher or a friend that was a good likeness, that everyone though was good? Or did you just get ignored as your drawing was not all that much like your subject?

It is around about the age of 8 that we begin to take notice of what others think about what we do. This includes our awareness of whether we are perceived to be a "good drawer" or not.

Those of us who are shunned for our seeming lack of ability to represent someone's face in a realistic manner, pretty much decide there and then that "we cannot draw" or "I am no good at drawing".

We then take that awareness one step further and reassure ourselves that it is OK not to be able to draw, as we are not an artist. With this we step back from pursuing any art education that would give rise to a greater ability or artistic intelligence.

So when I see grown adults trying to draw a person, it is usually to the ability of an 8 year old because that is where they left off back in the 3 rd grade.

Imagine if we applied the same rule to "reading" or "writing". We would face a very handicapped life if that were the case, and for an unfortunate majority in under developed countries this remains the case for all of their lives. Whereas we in the west have access to education that helps us to take our raw intelligence and build it into a reliable resource for our own betterment and support of our needs through employment or some business related activity.

With education drawing skills can be transfered from one individual to another. Just like learning to read or write, drawing can be taught and everyone can learn. That is right I said everyone. It doesn't take someone with special gifted hands to draw or paint, just look at the folks that have learned to do it with their feet or mouths. It lies in the artistic intelligence that we all have inside us, nurtured into an expression that reveals so many things to us about what we actually see in this world of ours.

So yes you can learn to draw, and you can draw better than an 8 year old, you just need to pick up where you left off and there is really nothing you cannot draw.

Next post, where do you go to learn to draw?

Drawing a Living from your Art Skills

Hi and welcome to my Drawing a Living blog.

Today I am going to discuss the in's and out's of drawing as a fulltime work pursuit. You can view my profile and visit my website to see that I am a professional illustrator and have been drawing and making a living from art since the age of 8. That's right got my first competition cheque for $15 at the tender age of 8 by coming second in the Health Week schools competition at St Thomas' Willoughby in 1969, the year man supposedly landed on the moon.

I say supposedly as I have grave doubts as to the fact after viewing many of NASA's videos on their own website that clearly from a professional 3D artist's point of view deem them as fake or orchestrated. Hey this sounds like the topic of another blog so we may just have to leave that thought right there. Maybe I will open up a little on that topic a bit later. It really is quite fascinating stuff. But for now I will leave Neil Armstrong and lunar crew alone.

Becoming an advertising illustrator in 1983 after completing a 2 year full time art school certificate course that desperately tried to help me avoid the up and down lifestyle of the "freelance artist" but no I wouldn't listen, and have since had to pay the price of not taking other more experienced peoples' advice.

So I hope to enlighten some of you as to what to expect when it comes to drawing for a living. There are many ways of making or drawing a living from your art talents and I hope to show you some of the better ones and ways that will help you not to make the mistakes I have made over the past 25 years.

As you can see from my website www.gtgart.com.au I have created a good number of professional illustrations for a long list of clients both national and international. Another of my recent pursuits is that of pet portraits, as oil paintings. I have recently launched this site, www.mypetpainted.com. You may like to visit this site to see the quality of my oil painting artworks.

I have a work in progress called www.learn-to-draw.org and I am working with Artist Graeme Biddle, world renown for his caricatures and art training which he has conducted in 27 different countries around the world. He has taught school children in private colleges in England and poor African children out in the open fields and just about everybody else in between.

We are developing a "How To Draw" course on caricatures to help people discover the great art of cartooning for money. It really is a great way to make extra money for those who know the secrets behind a well drawn caricature.

It's funny but I wish I had a dollar for everyone who has ever said to me, "I wish I could Draw!" I have always had the ability to draw and it is something that comes easy to me. So I don't know what it is like to not be able to draw. To me drawing is as easy as seeing. That is not to say I have made no progress as an artist since that first competition back in 1969 but the raw ability
is something that has always been at the top of my skillset.

Another funny thing that I have discovered is that yes anyone can learn to draw. Yes that is hard to believe for many people who would readily tell me that they "couldn't draw to save their lives!" Oh really?

Most people could draw to save their lives, but it would be at about the level of an 8 year old. There is that age again, hmmm? What is it about 8 years of age and art? More on this in my next post.