Thoughts on Drawing from a Photographer

I never, ever considered myself even capable of traditional art until about two years ago, when I took my first art class as a junior in high school.

Photography and graphic design are my media. I have been taking serious photographs for eight years and have been designing and developing websites for almost seven. I had fully accepted that I was not good at any kind of traditional art, and was okay with that. I was taking this class in order to join the National Art Honor Society, but once I'd done my requirement I figured I could just go back to doing my same old thing.

As a detail-oriented person, thinking about the details of technique is what has often hindered me in my pursuit of drawing. I couldn't understand how anyone could take so much visual information and so easily translate it into strokes of graphite or paint.

But in the past two years I've found that blind confidence, above technique, is the most important part of being a successful traditional artist -- and artist in general! The most important part of drawing is being willing to put aside those, "How am I supposed to draw this?!" thoughts and just DRAW it, without thinking about the difficulty of what you're doing.

I used to say I couldn't draw to save my soul. I couldn't imagine how in the world any portrait artist could do his or her work while I could only claim to draw very proportionate stick figures. But once I set aside the "Oh my God, I'm supposed to draw X, how am I supposed to do that?!" attitudes and was forced to draw in accordance with a schedule and deadlines, I realized that not thinking so much is the way to get things done and improve.