This comment popped up on a newsletter I sent out with my Raven drawing yesterday:
“Your raven is stunningly beautiful. As are your words. As is the fact that your drawing course has filled my brain with curiosity. Now I see your drawings and think “ there is a way to do that, and I am going to find it”. As you know I used to think 100% that I can’t draw.”
I cannot begin to tell you how happy this makes me. For some reason, in so many of us, the thought of drawing, or painting, or writing- perhaps we could just call it “art”- creates a binary.
We think we are either good at it or not, blessed with the gift or born without it.
Thoughts which really are completely false.
I know some of you don’t believe me. This story of “I can’t do that” has us so seduced.
Perhaps not that long ago, I wouldn’t have believed me either.
Of all the things I’ve done, teaching myself to draw as an adult has been the biggest revelation of my life.
A very short time ago, I would have told you I only drew stick figures. And it’s not as though I even had a bad experience that put me off; there are no grumpy high school teachers or people who told me I couldn’t do it in my past.
I’ve never really drawn or painted. But I did admire those who could. And that curiosity was enough.
I say it’s the single biggest revelation because now I wonder:
If I told myself repetitively “I can’t draw” and that proved to be all wrong, what other BS stories am I telling myself?
What other things are waiting for me, magical, wondrous, possible?
Where else might I be prove myself wrong?
This line that Jane has written (her name is also Jane), “there is a way to do that, and I am going to find it”, I believe is the key to unlocking the mysterium.
If there’s one thing I’m grateful for, that drawing has repetitively shown me it’s this:
Oh, I love that! Let’s figure out how we can do it too.
Because you really, absolutely, most definitely can.
A picture of my moonlit owl from yesterday’s tinkering.