Learning to Draw

I didn’t always know how to draw. Here’s a drawing I made in first grade:

1981 saw me playing with oil pastels and ethnic stereotypes. This wasn’t my finest hour, but it was probably the very best I could do with objectively trying to draw a human figure. I needed some practice.

I needed my 10,000 hours.

Fortunately for me, I had a very supportive network. My parents had always encouraged me to draw and create, and for that I am going to be grateful to them for the rest of my life. Even beyond that, I had some incredibly supportive and encouraging art teachers all throughout school, somehow keeping me motivated to learn this craft.

I wanted to be able to draw something by looking at nature and copying that thing exactly, especially the human form. Later, a secondary goal developed: I wanted to be able to draw things without looking at anything at all.

I fell into a tried and true routine artists have used for millennia: copying other works of art.

This may have been a couple of years af…