Column
Every week, I'm humbled by a variety of household objects: a white ceramic cup; a pewter mug; a transparent vase. A bolt of striped cloth. A pair of aged work boots. A seashell.
Every week when I get to class, I set my pad up on my easel. I line up my pencils or take out my charcoal. I roll up my sleeves and shift around on my stool. I stand up. I sit down again. I look at the objects our teacher has put in front of us. I sit there for a long, long time. And I try to draw what I see.
I wasn't the artist in my family. I couldn't draw, though everyone else could. My second cousin Kristie is an illustrator of children's books, and her paintings of children and foreign places are so detailed that looking at them is like snuggling into an embroidered pillow.
My aunt Gloria designs and hand paints pretty and intricate canvases for needle workers.
My grandfather sketched a perfect replica of the Statue of Liberty and the ship bringing him to America in the pages of a leather-covered notebook---when he was 12.
My mother's watercolor of a winter forest hangs over her mantel.
My brother spent our childhood hunched over pieces of copy machine paper drawing action shots of Michael Jordan and other star athletes from pages he ripped out of Sports Illustrated.
But I could never draw.
My doodles looked like—doodles. My trees looked like flat lollipops. My houses looked like something sketched by a Cubist.
I kept trying, sort of. I would sit at the kitchen table with my brother and spend a few minutes trying to draw a dog before giving up and heading back to reading a book.
Oh, and I'd buy art supplies whenever I saw them, especially as I got older: bags full of blocky pastels, creamy paper and pointed HB pencils. For a long time I kept them in a crate in a closet, just in case. Just in case one day I woke up and suddenly realized that the drawing gene had manifested itself. Just in case I woke up one day and found myself to be an artist.
Not surprisingly, that method doesn't work.
I also read books on drawing. One summer, I spread out an armful of drawing books on my lap and just looked at their covers while tapping a pencil against the pad in my hands, as if I could learn to draw by osmosis.
I probably don't have to tell you that this method doesn't work, either.
Eventually, I just thought---Well, that's OK. I don't draw because I'm not an artist. My brother, he's an artist. My mom draws, because she's an artist. But me? I'm the family writer.
Everyone needs a niche in their family, right? And mine was writing. I write. Other people draw.
Yet, art kept calling to me.
About eight months ago, I moved to New York on an educated whim. And at some point I thought to myself, "Really. If you can do that—if you can just move here after an adulthood in Chicago—if you can find a job and an apartment, make new friendships and rekindle old ones, maybe you can learn to do this other thing."
And so I signed up for a class on beginning drawing.
My teacher does not over-instruct. She sets objects out on a well-lit table in the studio. She watches us draw them—or try to. She leaves us alone, mostly, unless we look up at her for help, and then she makes simple, effective suggestions---Extend this line. This should curve down, not up. You are drawing what you think is there, not what is actually there. Concentrate on varying the tones, on the darkness, on the light.
Every week, I set up my paper and I despair. How am I going to draw those folds in that curtain? How do I shade that foreshortened boot? It's impossible.
That's what I say to myself: It's impossible.
But I sit there. For two hours. And I look. And I draw.
Every week, I'm humbled. But by the end of the class, there it is: a wine bottle. A boot. A seashell.
The act of drawing drew out of me images I didn’t know were there.
Jennifer Vanasco is an award-winning, syndicated columnist based in New York. Email her at jennifer.vanasco@gmail.com; read her occasional blog and the column archives at jennifervanasco.com.
Drawing myself out
Wednesday, March 14, 2007
