Drawing is a way of seeing better

As a grad­u­ate stu­dent in design I was able to see how my much younger class­mates were able to see the world with much more clar­ity than tra­di­tional lib­eral arts stu­dents. The more I observed this phe­nom­e­non the more I believed that a design/visual arts edu­ca­tion was far bet­ter at equip­ping young peo­ple for life than the lin­ear­ity of lib­eral arts.

Most of us can remem­ber our ini­tial attempts at draw­ing and I will always remem­ber the impact of con­tour draw­ing on my abil­ity to see. If you have ever taught the “upside down draw­ing exer­cise” from Draw­ing on the Right Side of The Brain you’ll know the thrill of hear­ing the col­lec­tive ooohs and aaahs as stu­dents turn their draw­ings right side up. From that point on they never see their world in the same way and they will never think of them­selves as not being able to draw.

You know, over the years…

I have lost count of the peo­ple who have said to me, when hav­ing told them I am an artist, or  that I had stud­ied art at Uni­ver­sity, how much they loved art at and paint­ing at school. How much they loved draw­ing or paint­ing as chil­dren. I would then ask if they still drew or painted, and invari­ably their response would be the same, “naaa, gave all that up when I left school”. ‘Why though?’ I always ask. If they loved it so much, why stop? They usu­ally then tell me that they were not very good, but that they enjoyed it a lot (this whole issue of what can be classed artis­ti­cally as ‘good’ could and should be cov­ered in some depth another time I think).

It’s all about per­cep­tion isn’t it? Draw­ing and paint­ing is still seen as the purview of the seri­ous (or even ama­teur) artist, or chil­dren. Rarely do peo­ple con­tinue to paint once hav­ing left school for the sim­ple plea­sure of it alone. Most get sucked into the pro­saic though nec­es­sary busi­ness of mak­ing a liv­ing, and those that do have some leisure time left to them, usu­ally hit the gym, watch tele­vi­sion, go up the pub, knit, etc. Fair enough, noth­ing wrong with all those things.

How­ever, it has been proven again and again that the act of draw­ing, paint­ing, mak­ing the mark is men­tally ben­e­fi­cial, and indeed as we know is used as ther­apy for those with men­tal health ill­nesses, chil­dren and teenagers with spe­cial needs, in young offend­ers insti­tu­tions etc, etc. It is relax­ing, ther­a­peu­tic, cathar­tic, and fills a basic and fun­da­men­tal need in us all to express our­selves through colour and form. An exer­cise which we as human beings have under­taken since man became sentient.

So, to cut to the chase, if you are stuck for a gift for a friend or loved one, buy them a small sketch book that can be fit­ted into a pocket or a bag and some pens and abjure them to get doodling.

About the Author

Lor­rie Whit­ting­ton is a pro­lific and multi-talented visual artist liv­ing on the south coast of the UK. She is one of those unique peo­ple who have man­aged to unite both right and left sides of her brain pro­duc­ing a vision and skill set few hold. She is not only flu­ent in paint­ing, print mak­ing, draw­ing, graphic design and pho­tog­ra­phy she also speaks flu­ent Geek. Her flu­ency in Geek dialects include PHP, HTML,  CSS  and JavaScript as well as know­ing her way around Pho­to­shop and Dreamweaver.

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