aAfter a lifetime of scribbling on scraps of paper, a few years ago I finally started to take drawing seriously. I was backpacking and bought a box of crayons. I loved him right away. I spent the rest of the trip sitting in gutters and scribbling wonky buildings; In bars it attracts disfigured fellows.
Many who see me scribble say they are afraid to do the same. They say they have no talent for drawing. But I also enjoy learning how to do it.
When I was a child, my grandmother took me to visit Senaka Senanayake, a famous Sri Lankan artist. I stared at the walls of his house in the center of Colombo, covered in his colorful drawings and paintings. Many of them were decades old, ever since Senaka was child prodigy.
For years I thought all artists were – imbued with some gift that the rest of us were denied. But I realized that while I may never become a Senaka, I can always get close.
My early drawings were flat objects placed on the page, with little internal relationship or cohesion. It was also a combination of what I was trying to draw and my preconceptions. The tree became a strange combination of the tree in front of me and every other tree I had ever seen.
It’s easy to get discouraged when that’s all you’re pumping.
But the drawing is not purely mechanical. It’s about process and approach. This means that you can learn – you can teach yourself – to get better. My terrible drawings were and still suffer from a lack of understanding of the subject and a tendency to rush. It’s also possible that there are a bunch of other issues that I don’t yet know how to look for.
With practice, I’ve gotten better at forcing myself to slow down (although I’m still a lot less than I should), to watch and measure closely. To “compose” the drawing rather than just letting it fly.
When I took my drawing board on vacation after two years, I had learned more about it impression. I was still using crayons and the finer details aren’t there, but I really appreciate these drawings.
Here is a very bad view of Angkor Thom in Cambodia. I still remember sitting on the rock and drawing this.
I hate how obsessed the online art world is with brands and tools, but you really need to pick the right tool for what you’re trying to achieve. Recently, I have moved into watercolor painting and drawing with Final Designers. The smaller lines allow me to capture greater detail than the thicker crayons. Color brings images to life in ways that my old doodles lacked.
You can see some of this in a diagram from a recent walk around the rocks in Sydney. The perspective is wonky, but the details of the building are showing, and I’m starting to achieve some depth.
Practice is still the hardest part of learning to draw (or learning anything). It is difficult not only to find motivation, but guidance on how to effectively practice. Maybe continuing to switch media won’t help.
Faces are my favorite thing to doodle. My paintings looked like aliens – short foreheads, giant eyes, lopsided ears. Just look at this drawing of my wife now when we were dating a few years ago.
I worked a lot on my photos. I’ve borrowed all the books in my library, and watched countless hours of YouTube tutorials. I better understand the theory behind creation Value And the appearance Pictures. It’s mostly about practice now.
Progress is slow, but another attempt was made about two years ago. I’m still messing around with the face dimensions, but they’re a bit closer and look more 3D than the old graphics.
Here are the latest efforts. It’s still not quite the same, but at least now the facial recognition feature on the camera is starting to think someone is there.
I took out my sketchbook to pass the time at a family lunch recently. I was immediately crowded with my little cousins who asked me to paint them. I really tried, but none of it went well, and I was quickly given up.
I still have a long way to go. But I made progress and enjoyed the ride. Yes, I still make mistakes all the time, but it’s not the same mistakes I used to make.