drawanyway.com

There’s little that’s more dispiriting than spending time and effort on a picture, and it not turning out the way you wanted it. Why does this happen? Well, there are any number of possible reasons:

> You have a picture in your head, but stupid old evolution hasn’t yet given us the ability to transfer a picture from our brain straight onto the page - it could be that you just haven’t got the skills yet;

> Or maybe you took a gamble with your style, your media or your composition, and it didn’t pay off;

> Or you were thinking so hard, the picture came out too tight, when a loose, free, quick drawing would have served the subject better;

> Or perhaps you over-worked the picture - it was fine up to a certain point, but then you added a few more details and it all fell apart and started to look too fussy;

> Or a cat walked paint across it, a toddler came and added some thick poster paint lines, a family member spilt tea over it. All of these have happened to me. One day, I hope that something like this will happen that serendipitously makes the picture into a masterpiece, but that hasn’t happened yet.

I’m a mother now, so apparently I’m allowed to say trite things, and say them hundreds of times over. My point is this - in all things in life, and drawing is no exception, you should learn from your failures.

As I mentioned earlier this week, there isn’t an artist alive who is happy with every single picture they produce (or maybe there is. If so, I’d like to know what medication he’s on). This being the case, the best you can do is to try to work failure into your working process.

If you know that your first, second, third or even forty-eighth attempt is likely to be unsatisfactory, then why not make your first, second, third and forty-eighth attempt into a trial run?

I suppose this is just another way of saying don’t leap in, but a useful habit to learn is that of making thumbnail sketches. Before you start drawing, you just make a few small drawings - say, an inch by an inch and a half, with the basic shapes and composition marked out. Then you can see any potential pitfalls right away.

On the other hand, if your picture is bad because you were trying out new techniques or materials, give yourself a pat on the back, not a clip round the ear. It’s very unlikely that you were going to get to grips with new media right away, but you’ve learned something for when you come back to them. The key is not to give up after the first attempt.

The final learning you take from a bad picture should be why it’s bad. Before you screw it up and throw it at the cat, take a good look. Was it the proportion? The line? Just what’s wrong with it? If you can bear to, you should show it to a friend, or even better, post it here, and get feedback. There’s no shame in drawing badly - everybody does it. But the best artists learn from it.

Today’s task is a really fun one for the start of the weekend. I’ve just told you that drawing badly is a good thing. So I’d like you to try to draw a bad picture. Make it as bad as you can, then come here and post the results.