All kids draw. Then around age 10 or 11 they discover that they are either ‘good’ or ‘bad’ at drawing. The majority of kids aren’t ‘good’ and they lose interest in drawing forever.
This is crazy.
No one stops all writing when they discover they aren’t a novelist.
No one stops all speaking when they discover they aren’t a stand-up comedian.
Drawing doesn’t have to be art. It is visual communication. Communication is inseparable from thinking. You ’speak’ a language called ‘drawing pictures’ that you learned as a kid. Start drawing again now and you will improve your creative thinking and communication abilities.
You’re probably rusty, so I’ll help you get back into it. Each day this week, I will set a fun little drawing exercise to get you moving your pen(cil) around some paper. Do the exercise each day. By the end of the week, you’ll be well on your way to having the drawing confidence of a nine year-old.
First drawing
Grab an ordinary piece of blank paper and any pen or pencil.
Draw a smiley face.
Draw another, different smiley face.
Draw another, different smiley face.
Keep drawing smiley faces until you have drawn about 20. Try to make them all different.
You can keep your drawing exercises private, but if you’re feeling brave, send me a photo of your smiley faces. I’ll choose someone’s to put in tomorrow’s email.
There will be a couple good links in the comments today, Sunni Brown’s TED talk on how doodling improves creativity and comprehension and Oliver Sacks’ book Seeing Voices.
Grow slowly.
Jeff
Of course!
The Memory of TREE playlist – every song from every email:
"No one stops all writing when they discover they aren’t a novelist."
Gosh, never thought about drawing like that. Certainly someone who never draws because I'm 'bad' at it... Thanks for the encouragement!
Speaking of visual language… 'Imaginative and insightful, Seeing Voices offers a way into a world that is, for many people, alien and unfamiliar - for to be profoundly deaf is not just to live in a world of silence, but also to live in a world where the visual is paramount. In this remarkable book, Oliver Sacks explores the consequences of this, including the different ways in which the deaf and the hearing impaired learn to categorize their respective worlds - and how they convey and communicate those experiences to others.' https://www.amazon.co.uk/Seeing-Voices-Journey-into-World/dp/0330523643