People see me draw and ask me how I do it. I could ask them "How is it you can wash your hands while looking in the mirror?" They may say "I can feel them. I don't have to look at my hands to wash them." Well, that is how I draw. I do not have to look at the paper I am drawing on to draw. Allow me to explain.
We all do many things in life by feel. Whether it is fishing something out of our pocket, or out from underneath the sofa. I have a son who is a mechanic. He "feels his way" through nuts and bolts and parts, oftentimes repairing something without ever having seen it. Life is full of things like that. This helps me to explain how artists draw.
Grasp on to what I am saying here. There are a multitude of things in life which can be done "while blind." If our lights go out, we feel our way through the dark. I like to fish. But never have I had to SEE the fish taking my bait to set the hook. I can do that by feel. As I write this column, I need not look at the keyboard.
Likewise, I do not have to watch my hand draw the lines I see (and our world is made up of lines.) Not only should I not, I actually CANNOT, because I am "distracted" by my looking at what I am drawing.
Our hand will draw what our eye sees, if we let it. Drawing is about seeing (really seeing) what is "out there" in the world (and theres a LOT out there), letting our hand draw what our eyes see. That is just about it. Once we realize and accept this as fact (as opposed to believing only certain people have the capability of drawing or learning to draw), we then can, with minimal instruction and practice, draw like we never believed we could draw. After that, it is simply a matter of learning various "shortcuts" which lead to speed and quality.
But first we have to (actually) WANT to learn how to draw. Then, by learning what to look for, we break down what we observe into interlocking shapes (our world is made up of shapes) which are then formed by line made by hand (or foot or mouth as it is in some cases), which "felt their way around", just as we washed our hands while gazing at our beauty in the mirror.
