In defence of bad drawings

Drawing Nature

Hey all,

Welcome to Drawing Nature, the companion newsletter to Human Nature where I talk about my illustration process.

Last week, I shared the post on schizophrenia unwillingly as I had huge reservations about the illustration. I was so ashamed of it that I didn’t even announce the post on social media, not even as an Instagram story (I know). Now looking back at it, I think it’s not that bad.

The truth is I was just having a bad drawing day, and no matter how many times I tried it just wasn’t coming out right. You know those days when your hand doesn’t want to follow what’s in your head, or what’s in your head is simply not as clear as you think it is. Oliver Burkeman touches upon this in his book Four Thousand Weeks. He writes, “…any attempt to bring our ideas into concrete reality must inevitably fall short of our dreams.” And it’s true, not just because everything exists in the realm of ideas in its perfect form, but also since most of us can’t picture things in perfect clarity in our mind’s eye.

So when we refer to a mental image for a drawing, we’re working with a reference that’s ever-shifting, clear in some parts but blurry in others, and highly elusive. At least that’s always been my experience. But when we persevere, we either end up creating something new that’s full of good surprises, or something that’s full of bad ones. In the case of my last illustration, sadly the latter was true.

But with the benefit of hindsight, I realised that not all of the surprises were bad. There were parts of the image that I liked, such as the way I’d drawn the face of the old lady, the little character at the back poking his head out, some of the trees, and even the main character. Even though the final illustration didn’t work as a whole, it wasn’t a completely failed experiment, because I gained something from its parts.

In one of my previous posts, I mentioned the words of Karlotta Freier that guide the way I approach drawing, which is to draw things “in a way that’s interesting to me”. This is what I try to keep in mind when I put pencil to paper. I look for things about the subject’s form that I can emphasise or simplify, try to figure out how I can use mark-making, line, negative space, etc. creatively to bring it to life. When I manage to do these things, the drawing immediately becomes more interesting to look at. However, this is only half of the equation.