Learn to draw in 30 days

We all have different ways of coping with the crazy times we find ourselves in. This summer is a strange one in so many ways. It’s been beautiful and hot and precious here in New England, but as we tip into fall all of us are bracing for a school year far from normal, and the possibility of another winter trapped inside our homes. I’ve tried to be extra diligent lately with self care – doing things to build up my strength and nourish my spirit. And during a run a few weeks ago, I decided I wanted to learn how to draw.

It’s been interesting to discover my learning style. Lately, the trend has been towards video education. I hate hate hate and loathe learning things by video. I’m not sure why. I pretty much never go to Youtube for anything but workout videos (which are for some reason an exception). I know that there are probably infinite channels dedicated to this very task, as well as the entire video footage of Bob Ross. But I learned how to learn from books, and the written word is still 100% my preferred method. So I bought myself:

1) “You Can Draw in 30 Days” by Mark Kistler
2) A crazy complicated set of drawing pencils which did not come with any sort of guide on what to use when, or even what things are
3) A sketchpad. If I’d realized how BFFs you become with your sketch pad I would’ve bought a nicer one, but here we are

The first thing we drew was a pretest. We were supposed to draw a house, a plane and a bagel in five minutes each. I hesitate deeply to show you mine. You see, in my school, you either did art or you did music. And I definitely and 100% did music. And then some extra music. So I think my last formal education in art might have been … 3rd grade. And I wasn’t very good even in 3rd grade. Since then, I have improved not at all due to never trying to. So what you see below is not sandbagging – it’s actually my best attempt. DON’T MOCK ME. (Or, you know, only mock me behind my back.)

Obviously, any skills at all will be a vast improvement on the impressively-retained 3rd grade drawing level I started with. Since then, it’s been a real joy. The book is canny in showing you how to do something that looks and feels like a real accomplishment, and only sneaking a little theory or technique in along the way. It has those things, but the overall tone of the books is one of joyful experimentation on basics being taught. Here was my first real success, a measly three lessons in:

Then we moved onto squares. There are a few places where I could stand a little more explanation (like how do you get the length of the squares right? But my architectural friends better watch out – I’m not only doing open boxes, I’m doing treasure chests!

Then yesterday’s lesson was wild! Out of left field! After 7 days of circles and squares we suddenly went to …. koalas.

Then last night, from the giddy heights of Lesson 8, I thought …. what if I put all these things together in one crazy, overlapping circle, open box with pedestal, koala-combining extravaganza. Could I do it? Such a complicated piece? How do people not smudge their drawings when they do this? But I sat down and didn’t stop until I had … this.

I mean, compare to my pretest. Pretty amazing, right? There’s plenty of problems with it – probably more problems than drawing. But it was super fun! And it made me feel really good and accomplished and like I’d learned things. And that was a great feeling to have during this crazy time.

Here are my key takeaways so far:

1) Erasing is a tremendously important part of drawing – by intent. No artist is “so good” they don’t need the eraser. The eraser is a key tool.
1.5) I wish I had an eraser as precise as a pencil
2) I like to sketch in a high-hardness pencil (like 4H) and then texture in a high smudge pencil (like 4B). It’s somehow much easier to erase the Hs. I had to experiment a lot with the pencils to figure out what they did, and why you would use one over the other.
3) How DO people avoid smudging their drawings with their hands? Do they always move left to right (or non-dominant to dominant) in their drawings?
4) Someday I will not have to actually draw (and then erase) the sun to get the angles right. That day is a long time from now.
5) I still can’t tell with boxes whether I should shade in alignment with the angle of the box or the sun. Is the answer “it depends?” (Narrator: the answer is ALWAYS “it depends”)
6) It’s useful to redraw (in the bolder pencil) lines you want to have visible, so they really pop from the page
7) I’ve started thinking about drawing when I’m not drawing and noticing things in drawings I’ve never seen before.
8) This is fun.

I’m sure that if I power through to the end of the 30 days, I’ll inflict updates on you (or at my Instagram account – look for fairoriana).

The power of going from 0 to 1 in a skill you totally lack is intoxicating, especially when you get immediate rewards from the efforts. I’m looking forward to high powered doodles in my notebooks from here on out! Have you ever picked up a skill like this – where you could do nothing and then got to do something? Has that been a part of your COVID journey too? What have you always wished you could do, but never actually had the time and space to learn?