Reasons Not To Draw

"I can't draw."

Let's think about that. What does that mean, exactly?

Are you unclear about what the different ends of the pencil are for? Do you not ever have paper handy? Really, the very next person you encounter today can quickly show you these things.

I think what that actually means is,
"I can't draw the way I think people think I should be able to draw."

Therefore, whatever gets drawn is going to be, well, bad.

So, what does "bad" mean?

It means, it doesn't look right. It's not accurate. It's not art. It's ugly and malformed. It's messy. It's not whatever you had visualized in your head when you started. It's the wrong color. It's smudged. It's stupid-looking. It's in the wrong place on the paper. It's the wrong size. It's worse than what your kids can do. On some absolute scale in the universe, it is inferior. Bad.

I teach these classes, called Jams, where kids and grownups draw together. The point of the classes is to get people drawing together they way they might read together, getting all the benefits of drawing and having a good time in the process. We play games, we make collaborative drawings, and there is a lot of laughing and silliness.

Here's the thing: Making marks is healthy for your brain. And, it is really really basic to who we are. Which I think is why we are so judgmental. Humans tend to be visual creatures when we have the chance, so we're pretty discerning. We can tell that the lighting isn't quite right or the person's arms are too long. We may not know how to fix it, but we know there's a problem.

I love when the grownups in my classes get to laughing at what they are drawing. It's not a derisive, "that sucks" kind of laughter, it's just laughing because the drawing is funny. The ideas in it are funny. The process is funny.

I talk a lot more about this in "How to Draw Nothing:"

How To Draw Nothing

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If we can get away from the idea that we have to draw Something, we can all benefit from making drawings - minus the whole "I can't draw" thing. And in the process, show kids that it's okay to mess around and be silly and have ideas that don't necessarily fit onto the standardized test.