The Gift of Drawing

An odd thing has happened over the past three weeks...I've begun to draw again.

To understand how odd this is, you have to realize that I haven't really drawn (as in, sketched) in many years. I used to love to draw when I was a child. Up until I was about twelve, in fact, it was something that I really enjoyed doing. I'm not saying I ever showed a lot of talent, just that I loved doing it, found it relaxing and enjoyable.

I don't know what happened to change that. I can't look back and pinpoint a day or an experience that made me stop. In fact, I don't even think it was a conscious decision. I just know that somewhere around the beginning of adolesence, drawing became almost impossible. I almost felt like I had some sort of mental block so that when I picked up a pencil, I couldn't make it do what my fingers wanted it to do. The harder I tried, the worse it seemed to get, so I just quit (beyond occasional margin doodling in my journal which no one would ever see).

I've continued to love art all these years, and to enjoy other people's artwork. In the past few years, since my daughter was born really, I've felt my own urges to create visual art again growing stronger. For a long time, that translated itself into paper collages and cards. I've always loved design, especially designing with colors and patterns of basic shapes. Spending so much time reading children's pictures books in the past few years, I've been intrigued by the boldness and creativity of many children's book illustrators, and find myself thinking "I could do something like that' or 'oh, that gives me an idea to try that...' I've indulged my love of paper scraps for so long that I now have several small baskets and boxes full of images (and words) I've clipped from magazines, catalogs, newspapers, and wrapping papers.

But as much as I still enjoy doing collage work, lately I've had almost irrestible desire to sketch again. Even though I know I'm no good at drawing. Even though my most recent attempt, a few years back, to work my way through exercises in Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, only made me freeze up worse.

So a couple of weeks ago, I just suddenly did it. My little girl was having her nap, and I went and dug up a sketch book and some good sketching pencils which my parents had gotten me for Christmas a couple of years ago (along with some lovely watercolors I'd asked for, but have hardly yet used). And I started to draw. And...I don't know how to explain this...but suddenly, I could draw again. No, I'm not going to win any prizes any time soon, but the delight is back and so is the ease. In fact, the ease is a factor I don't even remember being this wonderful from my childhood drawing seasons...maybe it just feels extra precious because of the twenty-five year absence. It's as though the mental block has melted away. Some of it is, I think, time I've spent in recent years reading and writing poetry as well as the much more recent years I've been designing paper collages. I seem to see and feel lines more fluidly, note patterns more easily. I'm sketching all kinds of things, especially flowers and animals, and even bringing some of the design elements from my collage work (along with a few nods to Celtic knotwork) into creating some interesting geometric designs.

In a strange way, I feel as though a part of me has been healed, though it's hard to explain what part. I find myself a little afraid this ability will go away again, disappear just as mysteriously as it did a quarter century ago. But another part of me is just grateful that I can once more pick up a pencil and enjoy the delights of drawing. It almost feels more about having weathered some difficult inner growing seasons and learned a deeper art of seeing than it does about the drawing itself.

One of the picture books we've been reading over and over again lately is Jim Arnoksy's All About Owls. My little one has an utter fascination with owls right now, so the whole family is learning about them! I discovered Arnosky is a nature writer and illustrator, and picked up his wonderful book Drawing with Nature. Ironically, it was written in 1982, probably not long after I experienced the beginning of my personal artistic ice age. The book's done with young people in mind, but this middle-age mom who's recently rediscovered her childhood love of drawing is loving it. He includes sketches and small prose observations/meditations on "Drawing Water," "Drawing Land," "Drawing Plants" and "Drawing Animals." It's not a how-to book, and I'd probably run away from it right now if it was. He's a poet, and it's all about learning to see, to really look with attention at the world around you, and to find faithful ways to sketch what you see. As he writes:

"Drawing from nature is discovering the upside down scene through a water drop. It is noticing how much of a fox is tail. Drawing from nature is learning how a tree grows and a flower blooms. It is sketching in the mountains and breathing air bears breathe."