Green Thumbs Are For Suckers
Ok, this is going to be a shorty, because I just got the idea for it, and it’s 10 p.m. on Saturday and I said I was going to post on Saturdays.
One of the ideas I try to actively resist when I encounter it is the concept that drawing, painting, and other visual art skills are gifts that people are either born with or not, instead of a set of skills that are built step by step through repetition and practice, like reading or riding a bike. From what I can tell, most people seem to believe this green thumb theory about something, whether it’s keeping plants alive, or math, or basketball. Usually it comes up when people talk about an activity they appreciate on some level, but do not feel skilled enough to actively participate in themselves.
In my experience, this magical thinking is especially prevalent in beliefs about the arts, artists and performers. I hear it a lot when people come up and talk to me at events where I’m making big photorealistic portraits out of jellybeans. As much as I like hearing that someone thinks I’m talented or have a special gift, I wish I could think of a way to respond that would challenge or even just spark further thought about this idea of magical gifts as opposed to earned skills. When I try, I usually get some version of this response: “I could never do that, I can’t even draw a stick figure,” at least if I’m talking to an adult. In contrast, kids generally believe me when I tell them if they are interested enough in practicing, they can learn to draw or paint or make big pictures out of jellybeans just as well as I can, actually probably better, because I didn’t start practicing until I was a grown up, and they have way longer left to live than I do hopefully.
Anyway, I do not have a slick segue into this paragraph about learning new skills. I know it’s related to the green thumb idea, but I’m just going to tell you about it and let you figure out how, because it is 11:30 now, and this has turned out to not be such a shorty after all. I feel like a fraud sometimes, because I do not possess the skills I really need in order to practice art in the way I want to. Like, yes, I have some skills, but they are mostly hacky, wheel-reinventy, half-assed chicanery compared to what I know is possible, and what I am pretty sure at this point is necessary for me to get out of this stuck place I mentioned last week.
I want the confidence that comes with mastery. I’ve been bumping up against the same gaps in my foundational skills for years. In fact several years ago in doing research to find where to get these skills I ran across a website for an online classical drawing and painting atelier, and joined on impulse because it seemed like it was exactly the kind of training I was looking for. But I was too intimidated to sign up for the membership subscription that included weekly instructor feedback, and I soon got frustrated with my lack of progress, and didn’t feel confident in my ability to tell when I was ready to move from one lesson to the next, so I ended up cancelling after a few months. In the time since, I’ve come to the point where I apparently am not as bothered by the idea of feeling like an idiot, so I’ve signed up again, with weekly feedback, and I’m currently working my way through Intro to Drawing at Sadievaleriatelier.net. I’ll tell you more about it later, but here are a couple pictures of some of the stuff I’ve been working on so far.
Lesson 1: sharpening pencils like this for some reason.
Also in Lesson 1: Copying this eye from a Bargue plate by following extremely detailed instructions. Is it so blurry because I had to erase so much, or is it because it is so small and I had a hard time photographing it? The answer is yes.