drawing

i've been drawing since i was about two. i'm pretty good at it. i don't post my drawings here because a) it would be a bit time consuming to try to do from school computers, b) i don't know how to do it, and c) this blog is about my foray into another art field. using language as an artform fascinates me. drawing is my natural response to the world -- that is, i didn't have to learn that instinct, or even the mode of drawing, really. its just there. i'm not the greatest draughtsman in the world -- there are plenty of people who draw better than me, and sometimes i'm ashamed that i am not as good as i could be. i could be great. i could be spectactular; but i'm not. there are lots and lots of people better than me. granted, they've all gone to artschool, and have recieved formal and proper training. i have the chops to get into artschool, but i never had the money, and i don't draw every day. its not that i don't want to be better; but the structure of formal training would help me immensely, and i don't have that.

i've been gifted with a perfectly fine talent. it the company of my peers it has always made me stand out. it has come far more naturally to me than writing does. so why turn my attention to this?

i'm not sure really. maybe this is true, maybe it isn't, but it seems to me that pictures come first to everyone, and language comes second. language has to be learned, and pictures, as long as you are born with working eyes, are just there. you don't have to learn pictures. you don't have to learn the act of seeing. you don't even have to learn the instinct to represent what you see in a drawing either -- we all do it as kids, naturally. its why they make crayons.

language on the other hand has to be learned, taught; almost invented. it takes the abstraction process further, requires more sophisticated mental functions. it is not immediate. this doesn't make one necessarily better than the other, thats not what i'm getting at.

the primitivity, the inherent quality of pictures is primary to all of us. but the fact that it is specifically primary to me, isn't that an argument that it deserves more of my attention? shouldn't it take precedence for me over the secondary less naturally occuring structure of language?

maybe i shouldn't generalize. language is as naturally occuring a phenomenon as seeing -- while there is something contrived about language, something about it that needs building, that doesn't mean it is unnaturally occuring. but it comes after pictures, for everyone. and certainly, specifically for me, it comes after pictures as well. so again. why am i writing? why am i trying to be a writer?

i don't know, truthfully. when i started writing (mainly painfully bad poetry) it wasn't any good. i kept it up...because of the encouragement of people who maybe didn't know that it was bad poetry, or thought it more important not to care (God bless them). i don't really have any idea whether any of my poetry now is any good; i like it at first, but after a week or so i end up hating whatever i've written. but that's not as important as the fact that i'm a much better writer now than i was then, and some people tell me i'm a pretty good writer now. which makes me believe its really about practice, and a drive to do well, to chase quality, to put quality influences into your head and pull out a quality something.

i had an earlier start with pictures than i did with language. my writing is still in its infancy, in a lot of ways. ok, maybe in its terrible twos. but that doesn't mean i can't be good at it -- that i can't be great at it someday -- it doesn't mean that i can't be as natural and talented a writer as i am an artist.

initially, in their primary stages, pictures and language are about expression. later they evolve -- or we come to realize through the use of them -- that they are about representation. which is only a little bit different, but makes all the difference in the world.