On flying back from Vancouver recently, I began sketching and coloring a colored pencil drawing of a daisy I had been working on. I was amazed at the reaction. Many people confessed that they could not draw at all and were amazed at my talent. This is not uncommon. I have similar experiences whenever I draw in public.
But here's a confession: I'm not all that good at drawing myself. By that I mean that I don't have any natural gift for drawing. If I do something good, it comes from patience, lots of erasing, and an openness to improve even when early efforts are unpromising. Most of all, though, whatever skill I have comes from a willingness to draw what I see, rather than what I think I see. The distinction is important and forms the thesis for this short essay.
Semiotics is an obscure academic subject mostly hiding as an even more obscure subfield of philosophy. Formally, it is the study of symbol. Despite its obscure position in academia and even more obscure position in society at large, the ability of humans to translate the particular into symbols is one of mankind's most important achievements. Obviously, the main use of language is to communicate, but what, exactly, does it mean to communicate? In essence, communication is the translation of subjective and particular experience into symbols permitting someone not experiencing the same thing, event, time, or place to relate to the experiences of the communicator. This relies on the use of symbolism, the translation of the particular into the general.
Thus, when I mention to you that the airplane seats were uncomfortable during my flight from Portland to Oakland, you, the reader, cannot know exactly what my seat felt like, nor its color, nor whether it's unsuitability mainly stemmed from inadequate back support compared with a lumpy cushion, but you can know, in general terms, the sensation of an uncomfortable seat. You, dear reader, have probably experienced such seats too. The broader point is that my language translated the particular experience, an uncomfortable seat on a flight from Portland to Oakland, into a set of general symbols recognizable to those not having had my specific experience. Mathematics is the same sort of ingenious creation, translating a specific experience of number into a general experience.
In large part, our maturity is measured by our ability to skillfully manipulate symbols in deriving ever more general associations between what we experience and what might be related to society as a whole.
So what does this have to do with drawing? Essentially, we do the same thing as we mature in our drawings, replacing the specific for general "formulae" for drawing hills, houses, the sun, people, and so on. For a period in our lives, this generalization is quite satisfying. The transition from constructing, from scratch, images of Mom, Dad, sister, brother, house, dog to drawing such images from prescribed formula, is seen by most children as an accomplishment, an advance.
But then problems arise. Unlike most aspects of life, where generality is a goal to strive for, symbols, generalities, are the great enemy of art. We do not wish to draw a generic or symbolic chair, but rather this chair on which we as currently seated. We do not wish to draw a generic girl, but rather the girl sitting across from us on the train. Art, particularly in the formative adolescent years, is about the particular rather than the general, and here the conflict lies.
Having worked hard at and been rewarded for effective symbolism, it seems natural to turn to this technique in drawing as well. But this does not produce a picture of THAT chair, only a picture of a generic chair from a generic angle. Thus, fundamentally, the production of art is about ungeneralizing, drawing the specific rather than the general drawing what you see, even if, for the momentm it looks terribly wrong compared to its symbol.
Ultimately, it is this conflict, between the symbol and the specific, that makes art so difficult. At a deep level, it's a totally unfamiliar exercise.
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