I previously wrote on the subject of learning to draw. I suggested that drawing was little more than an acquired skill, much like learning to drive a car, and how anyone can learn to draw, given desire and instruction.
This topic reminds me of a poem by Walt Whitman, entitled, "When I Heard The Learn'd Astronomer." The great poet has us look at the vast universe of facts and figures, charts and diagrams of Astronomy which the professor presents to us, contrasting this between the perfect silence of awe, wonder, and mystery at wandering off alone into the night to really look upon the stars.
As students of art, we, like Walt Whitman in his poem "wander off by ourselves" away from all our facts and figures to stand in "silent awe" at the simplistic wonder of our world around us; i.e. what is "really out there" to draw.
When study time is over, when we have finished the drawing exercise and held it to our chest, are we cherishing a document of facts and figures, a chart, or a diagram? Or, are we treasuring an extension of our true selves, alone, having preserved that which we have really observed, not just in passing, but in the beauty of it's complexity, something only captured by the facts and figures of our learning?
Our need to look ever more deepely at and even into our subject is not some new or novel idea in Art, but a very ancient one indeed. Not only can we all learn to draw like DaVinci, we should all know that the ability to see things more deeply is present within all of us, whether we ever learn to draw or not.
