For every college class of 20 or so beginning-drawing students, one or two show up with extraordinary drawing talent. I’m talking about students with a ready ability to see and draw shape, to see and draw in proportion, to draw to scale, to draw the symmetry of things, to sense visual balance, to place objects on a picture plane in an interesting way, and to use a sensitive touch in their mark and line. Talented drawing students not only find it fairly easy to make drawings where a doggie looks like a doggie, they also draw the doggie in a beautiful way that transcends mere mechanical imitation.
Those of us who teach drawing know how to spot the super-talented drawing students on the first day of class—generally within the first 20 minutes. They always draw boldly from the get-go, using both their shoulder and arm, rather than merely the hand. Many of them show off at least a little bit—not because they’re unusually vain, but because people always gather around them to watch them draw or to look at their finished drawings.
An important part of teaching drawing is to know how much to publicly praise the work of the best students in the class. One wants to encourage the terrific drawers, of course, but not at the expense of those who are struggling with their drawings. Good teachers know how to point out the virtues in the best work without making a fuss over it.
As a drawing teacher, I have to do my own fair share of showing off. Whenever I do a demonstration, it’s a bit as if I’m on stage. Occasionally, I’ll goof during a demonstration, but like all artists, I know how to turn goofs into opportunities. Messing up in front of my students offers me a way to show them what opportunists artists are. “Look,” I’ll say, pointing to an error. “I’ve just made a mistake here. What should I do? Watch!” Then I’ll turn my mistake to my advantage, incorporating it in some way into the drawing so that it ends up looking as if it belongs there.
Leonardo advocated artists draw in front of other artists, noting that competition—the drive to be outstanding—improves performance. There are moments when I goof, sure, but there are also moments when I’m so “on” during a demonstration that I hear audible gasps from my students. When I hit bingo like that, I feel a surge of pride, and I’m not afraid to say out loud, “Not bad.” Curiously, the students are admiring the action of my drawing more than anything else. They like looking at drawings well enough, but they like the activity of drawing–or watching while someone with talent draws–even more.
Although I don’t claim to know where drawing talent comes from, I have a few observations to make about it. First, it tends to show up very early—by the age of four or five. Second, talent cuts across sex, race, class, and intelligence. Third, talented drawers, like talented actors (but in my experience, unlike talented writers) know with certainty that they’re talented. Fourth, if the character of the talented drawer is such that he or she can’t take criticism, the talent won’t take the artist very far. Finally, most students—even those with very little or even no talent—will improve under the tutelage of a good teacher. Practice, perseverance and will have a way of matching the results of what some lucky few do because of gifts granted them by nature. In drawing, for example, students who start out miserably incapable of copying shape and seeing in proportion can master these things fairly well. It’s a lot harder for them to develop “touch,” however.
For centuries, becoming an artist was a rather simple matter. A youngster showed off his drawing talent to a master who then took him into his workshop. Among the talented artists who came to the fore, competition was intense. Protogenes famously drew a line so fine that it appeared not to have been drawn by a human being. Then Apelles came along, proving he was the greater artist by deftly dividing it in half–lengthwise. Famously, Giotto is said to have earned a fat commission by demonstrating he could draw a perfect circle. Later on, Leonardo made Giotto look old-fashioned by his subtle tonal gradations and a gestural line that replaced the charming but flat shapes like those used by Giotto with the wondrous roundness of nature. Rembrandt took things further, showing off with a flick of the wrist and a couple of lines breathtakingly indicating a whole human being. And so on.
But just as the invention of the automobile eventually made the horse irrelevant to transportation, the invention of the camera, in 1839, has made talent-based drawing mostly irrelevant to art. Drawing based on talent still has a place in the art world, but it’s a small place. There’s really not much taste for a drawing of a doggie that looks like a doggie in an age with digital cameras and computer drawing programs that let even the talentless draw as if they’re masters. Hard as it is to break the news, drawing teachers need to tell young students with drawing talent the truth: You have a wonderful talent that’s not really of much value in today’s world.
Nevertheless, studying the kind of drawing I’ve been talking about here, where talent has traditionally played such a big role, is valuable. It introduces both the talented and the talentless to the notion that through drawing they can see our world with perspicacity, and thereby discover new truths about it. In an era when life rushes by the living, that’s no small matter.
