A few weeks ago, I led a drawing workshop in which I focused on making quick figure drawing sketches. Drawing is something I very much like to do and have comfort with, and showing other people is such a different mode. I showed some steps that I used for sketching a modern dancer taking a leap. I felt energized talking about all the different strategies I use and what I have learned in my own artistic journey. The intent of my workshop was to lead people who draw on rare occasions to develop comfort with practicing drawing human proportions. It is very odd for me to try to teach drawing. I think I am very good at teaching subjects which I previously had a discomfort with and since developed mastery. In those subjects maybe I had more conscious thought of what I was doing from a mechanical sense.
Drawing is something I just do. I don’t have a clear memory of having a discomfort with it, although I have received critiques of things to fix, which I was hungry for but did take a bruise to my ego before improving on those bits of feedback. I also just have an aversion to any step-by-step instruction on how to draw something specific. I don’t believe people should draw like other people. Drawing skill comes from developing the ability to draw what you see from doing that over and over again and releasing the filters of what you think something looks like and drawing what it actually looks like. Think of how hard it is to draw a bicycle on a first attempt. It seems simple enough in concept as a structure with two wheels and a handle bar, until I realize I have a very distorted idea what a bicycle actually looks like and how all those parts are arranged in the physical. Developing the focus to see not only the individual parts but how they are arranged within a space, using the context of how pieces are positioned in relation to each other, using parts of the composition as measuring tools for their placement (i.e. her left foot is positioned slightly to the right of her elbow, but a few inches to the left of the doorway frame in the background.) If I lead another workshop focused specifically on developing drawing skills rather than developing comfort with drawing itself, I think I will focus on just seeing things in space. After someone learns to draw what they see, they can just amplify it by combining it with idea. Then you get styles like surrealism, impressionism, and everything else that combines elements with realism and just pure thought.