James McMullan

This quarter I am taking a drawing class with professors Nancy Cheng and John Brehm.  I’m always looking to increase my speed in sketching as well as improve quick design drawing.  This morning I found the Line By Line blog on the NY Times that explains drawing techniques.  While it may be very basic, it’s always interesting to learn how other people have come to understand the way they draw.

One of the most interesting anthropological notes I’ve taken recently is the amazement people have when they see something drawn well.  It’s interesting, as a specialized culture, that one of the basic human skills has become unusual.  In his blog, James McMullan describes the evolution of understanding drawing: “Drawing, for many people, is that phantom skill they remember having in elementary school…but whatever the subject matter, this robust period of drawing tended to wither in most students’ lives and, by high school, drawing became the specialized province of those one or two art geeks who provided the cartoons for the yearbook and made the posters for the prom.” I think we can all relate to this, either from the viewpoint of the drawing enthusiast or the absentee artist.

Drawing, in my experience, is seeing. Someone that draws well has paid attention to the exact way in which our world is composed.  In this way, drawing is at least 50% technical, and relatively simple.  The other 50% is character and the way you form your lines, frame the picture, choose your perspective, shade, and color.  Drawing is active learning: making mistakes and learning from them, and discovering the composition of our world, manmade and natural.