I Dreamed I Could Draw

The other night, I dreamed that I could draw.  I was sketching the outline of a Shakespearian costume--the sleeves, I think.  I remember marveling at myself: cool! I can DO this!

 Then I drew a man in armor holding a lance, and as I was drawing his arm holding it, I suddenly realized his entire head in his helmet was on backwards. So much for my drawing ability. 

But it made me wonder why I could draw at all in my dream. What's the difference between being able to manipulate imaginary lines in my head and doing it on the page? Fine motor skills, yeah. I have little to none of those.  But they say drawing is seeing. And if I can see, even briefly in my dreams, then why can't I draw when I'm awake?

Then again, I can fly in my dreams, too.  Are dreams only what we hope for or what we are actually capable of?

I think all dreams must be rooted in a tiny spot of reality somehow. If we only knew which spot it was. 

Thinking with a Pencil

“The ability to think with a pencil is the core of surviving in a 3D world,” illustration director Chuck Pyle told me. “We’re not here to train them for today or tomorrow. We want to give our students the skill set they can use forty years out.” ---James Gurney (of Dinotopia fame) reporting on his visit to the Academy of Art University in San Francisco.

The ability to "think with a pencil" is at the core of training writers, too. I'm doing a writing workshop for eight classes of sixth-graders next month.

I have hundreds of shiny red pencils to give out,
with the words READ*WRITE*BELIEVE on them.

What I have to do now is figure out the best way to show them how a simple piece of wood can help them THINK.

Here's my preliminary brainstorming:

• Thinking with a pencil is more fun than thinking only inside your head. (How to show this? A video of me as a cavewoman, trying to "use" a pencil for the first time? Blow bubbles to illustrate how unwritten thoughts evaporate? Learn how to flip a pencil?)

• There are many ways of thinking with a pencil: The free write. The story map. The doodle. The list. The cartoon. The sketch. The outline. The interview. The poem. The short story. The mechanical drawing. The essay. The novel. Even MadLibs can be a way of thinking. (I thought I might show some great examples from great thinkers.) The important thing is that thinking with a pencil is both visual and kinetic. It makes your thoughts visible and physical.

• If you get stuck, you can always chew on your pencil. Or sharpen it a lot. Or tap out your poem to see how the rhythm runs. Do NOT, however, poke someone with it. (I can show the pencil lead stuck in my right hand as a cautionary tale.)

• The more you think with a pencil, the better you will get. (I can illustrate this visually by using my old sketches from drawing class. Also, I could show the sketch that began Letters From Rapunzel and show how it turned into a book.)

• We could take a boring sentence on a giant sheet of paper, and use a pencil to think out loud and improve it. (Maybe we could use a GIANT pencil?)

I still have a lot of work to do on this idea.

Better get out my pencil.

The Boxer from the Drawing Club

What's the point of writing about something that's been written about a thousand times? (I'm talking fiction here.)

This is why:

Because no two people stand at the same place in the circle.
Because what you choose to see is important.
Because I only get to live one life. If I can read what you write about, I get to cheat a little.

Go here to see how students in the Drawing Club interpret a 5-10 minute pose of "The Boxer."

The Accidental Artist

I did it, people. I achieved my summer goals. And the funny thing is, I wouldn't even have known about it, if Franki at A Year of Reading hadn't blogged the question: So how did those Summer Goals go?

For those of you who missed my comment to that post, here's what I said:

Oh, my...you reminded me to go back and look at what I posted on my website as goals.

And I am SHOCKED. I actually did ALL of them. And this is me, who doesn't even bother to do New Year's Resolutions because I'm so sure I won't keep them. What happened? Was it the public nature of the posting? I'm thinking I may have to blog about this! And I'm thinking my new goals are going to be earn a million, travel to Bali, and have Lyle Lovett write a song to me.

(To Franki) I LOVED your self-check in. No waffling. Just NOPE where appropriate. I think it's important to acknowledge that sometimes we make goals for ourselves that just don't work.

As much as I want this post to be a funny riff on those imagined new goals---oh, please, Lyle...I'll even go motorcycle riding with you---I think I really should address that last sentence instead:

"Sometimes, we make goals for ourselves that just don't work."

I read once that we should always be clear about what standards we're holding ourselves to. If we don't, those unwritten standards (goals) are likely to be things like:

1. Write the most awesome children's book that has ever existed in all of time.

2. Love my work every second of every day and never doubt myself or wonder if I should be healing the sick or teaching or baking coma-inducing cappuccino muffins.

3. Be fabulous at everything, including public speaking, self-promotion, time-management, and rainmaking, but remain humble, lovable and sane through it all.

On the other hand, if we use our creative powers to come up with goals that are attainable right from the get-go, they just might motivate us. Remember the drawing class I blogged about? Well, I often panicked in that class because I wasn't any good. Here's how my brain dealt with that: I SUCK! I'M THE WORST ARTIST ON THE PLANET! I SHOULD GIVE UP AND DIE RIGHT NOW! But then I remembered my goals in taking that class:

1. To learn something new (Yes, yes, I was doing that.)

2. To experience the terror of trying something I knew I was bad at, to learn to deal with fear (Yes, yes, totally succeeding at that.)

3. To gain insight into my writing. (Um, well, I was running to my journal after each class, so yes, yes to this one, too.)

4. To enjoy myself. (No, not right at this second. But I can fix that.)

You see, nowhere in those goals was: be a great artist. Be the best drawer in the class. Have my own gallery show after a month. That would have been ridiculous. Except that in my writing life, I do this to myself all the time. I set goals in my head that are not attainable right from the start.

So, how low can your bar go?

1. Think about writing a novel at least once a day.

2. Pick up my notebook and hold it.

3. Enjoy walking to the mailbox to see if there's good news in it.


You think I'm kidding, don't you? But I'm not. Every one of your goals should be attainable. At least one of them should contain the word ENJOY. And none of them should make you feel like a failure.

"It is in the empty spaces between the dots that the illusion of character arises"

Learning how to draw changed my life.

I'm not saying that I became a great artist. And I'm not saying that after reading Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain and signing up for "Drawing I" with David Barnes at the Newport Art Museum, that I had any true intention of changing anything. The entry from my journal that day says this:

November 21, 00
I'm curious to see if drawing brings me ideas and characters, if drawing will prompt me to write. Or gives me new insights into actual stories, not just the general theory of writing. I would think the emphasis on seeing in drawing would serve me well as a writer, help me with detail, as well as proportion and relationships. And the idea that we often do not see because we label and generalize is very applicable to writing–that’s how bad poetry is written, clichés, stale characters. If nothing else, I think drawing could be a great method of turning off my left brain before each writing session, of relaxing, of being receptive.

Then came this:

February 2, 01
Drawing class was rewarding yesterday. We worked some more on proportion and perspective and I think I finally have gotten the idea of it. My last drawing of the day turned out pretty well. I've been working only in charcoal, but today I brought drawing paper so I can move off of newsprint and use a pencil also. I also bought a drawing board to secure my paper. I peeked at my drawings from yesterday and they give me great joy. I'm so pleased with them, as raw as they are, because they seem so alive.

This:

March 13, 01
“A painting–like writing–is a problem with too many solutions and not nearly enough rules.” W. J. Innis

“Readers naturally try to connect the dots you’ve drawn; it is in the empty spaces between the dots that the illusion of character arises. Those voids between points are taken to be the mysteries, the vagaries, the tinctured nuances that lie at the heart of human personality” M.T. Anderson

This:

May 02, 01
After drawing class. Feel like I’ve been beat with a stick. Struggled so hard and I'm so far behind. I keep hoping for that magic moment when it will all click and I’ll be great, but it isn’t going to happen. I’ll never be fabulous, never even scratch the surface. I hate being unable to do something I love. It’s like I have a brain disorder, and what my eye and brain see, my hands won’t draw.

Except sometimes, they do. Sometimes, I lose track of time and I'm just drawing. But how to get there? Practice, practice, practice–I know the answer. Practice, so that when the fear comes, I'll recognize its ugly face and the feel of its hands on my neck. I know you Fear, I'll say. I know you can’t kill me, and I know I can’t get rid of you either. I can only walk on despite you. I don’t even think it helps to spit in your eye, to challenge your hold. I must embrace you, Fear, know you intimately–all your tricks.

This:

May 30, 01
The only thing I have to do is convince myself it's worth holding on, and that it doesn’t matter how stupid I look. I'm willing to look stupid in order to learn how to draw, to learn how to write a novel. Was this all it took? A willingness to be humiliated? No, but that’s a big chunk of it. What will I do one day in class if I never break through? It hasn’t happened yet. I always manage to relax, to see, to make something happen.

Because it isn’t about me, and my skill. It’s about being open to the world, to its beauty, which is always there, no matter if I'm personally blind or not. Some days, I see a small portion of it, other days, the light is dim; on rare days, it's brightly, brilliantly lit, but it's always there. To serve.

And finally this:

July 18, 01
Now I look back at my drawings, flipping through the pages, surprised each time by the intensity of the faces, how much I remember of their making. How many times I re-drew that man’s hand. What a delightful shade of green he wore. How I captured his white hair just right. My drawings aren’t just drawings. If they were, they would be judged awkward, adolescent, thin. They are, instead, a record of their making. A record of battles engaged, skirmishes won, whole armies of selves lost.

See–I'll be able to say to my grandchildren–see–this is who I was and how I lived. They might say, “Grandma. It’s just yellowed newsprint and look–you made the nose all wrong.” But maybe not. Maybe they will take out a pencil and lie beside me and draw, and I'll know they know how to live.

How I saw the world before:





And after:





Drawing Power: Everyone needs it.