Chapter 1
The Useful Bad Drawing
A bad drawing is not the opposite of a good drawing. It is often the earlier form of one.
The first sketch of an idea is allowed to be uncertain. The first attempt at a face may place the eyes too high. The first drawing of a cup may look like a bucket with an ear. This is not evidence that you cannot draw. It is evidence that your hand and your attention have not yet agreed on what they saw.
Most beginners make the same mistake before the pencil touches paper. They imagine a finished drawing and judge the first line against it. The imagined version is clean, confident and complete. The real line is hesitant. The comparison is unfair because the drawing in your head did not have to survive contact with paper.
A useful bad drawing has one job: to teach you something.
It may teach you that the mug handle begins lower than you thought. It may show you that the plant's leaves overlap in groups rather than appearing as separate symbols. It may reveal that you have been drawing every nose from memory instead of looking at the particular nose in front of you.
The mistake is information.
Many adults draw with a small library of symbols learned in childhood. An eye becomes an almond with a circle inside. A tree becomes a brown stick with a green cloud. A house becomes a square and triangle. These symbols are efficient, but they replace observation.
