No Joke: Learn to Draw

 

Between the ages of four and six, children become visual storytellers. They use pictures to tell stories—moments from their lives, wishes, even traumas are processed visually. A year or two later, children are already familiar with so many symbols that they can draw entire scenes and landscapes: sky and earth, suns and flowers, garden fences and cars.

By the age of ten, children mainly want to draw accurately and realistically. They want things to look “right.” But because they are not yet familiar with the techniques of perspective drawing, many become frustrated at this stage, give up, and end their careers as visual storytellers.

Unless you are an architect, graphic designer, or artist, chances are you still draw the same house today that you drew when you were ten years old.

Letting Machines Draw?

Do you apologize when someone asks you to sketch something? Or do you immediately turn to AI instead of trying it yourself with a pencil, crayons, or a drawing app?

You are not alone. But don’t hand everything over to the machine just yet. There is no harm in developing your skills a little further—or simply finding the courage to draw yourself. After all, you were brave enough at age ten.

Art teacher Betty Edwards identifies two main reasons why we suddenly stop drawing and fail to develop this ability further: We are unfamiliar with the rules of visual language. We think far too much “from the left brain.”

The ABCs of Visual Language

In school, we spend years learning the rules of language and writing. We learn the alphabet, how letters form words, words form sentences, punctuation, grammar, and much more. Yet we learn almost nothing about the ABCs of visual language.

Painters, graphic designers, photographers, and visual creators understand the five fundamentals of perception that are just as crucial for interpreting images as phonetics, syntax, and grammar are for text:

• Perception of edges: The ability to recognize where things begin and end.
• Perception of space: The ability to understand what is in front, behind, or beside something else.
• Perception of relationships: The ability to recognize proportions and perspective.
• Perception of light and shadow: The ability to perceive brightness and tonal values.
• Perception of gestalt: The ability to see details while simultaneously recognizing the larger whole.

Even more than our lack of visual literacy, Betty Edwards sees our “left-brain dominance” as the reason we struggle to truly see—and are therefore limited in our ability to draw.

Overcoming Left-Mode Thinking

In everyday life, we constantly train the left hemisphere of our brain—the side responsible for text, language, and logical reasoning. Meanwhile, we neglect the right hemisphere, which governs visual and intuitive thinking.

Edwards sees painting and drawing as ideal ways to train the right side of the brain and sharpen our ability to perceive the world more clearly.

“Learning to draw is really a matter of learning to see—to see correctly—and that means a good deal more than merely looking with the eye,”

she quotes artist Kimon Nicolaides in her bestseller Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain.

Edwards also warns:

“A caution: as all of our students discover, sooner or later, the left hemisphere is the Great Saboteur of endeavors in art. When you draw, it will be set aside—left out of the game. Therefore, it will find endless reasons for you not to draw: you need to go to the market, balance your checkbook, phone your mother, plan your vacation, or do that work you brought home from the office. What is the strategy to combat that? The same strategy. Present your brain with a job that your left hemisphere will turn down.”

Tip: Want to know how dominant your left hemisphere really is? Betty Edwards developed an exercise for exactly that purpose—simply visit her website and try it yourself.

Drawing What Is Actually There

Only when we quiet the “logical” side of the brain can we truly observe without prejudice—and stop drawing what we think we know in favor of drawing what we actually see.

Try this experiment yourself: take a photograph or graphic illustration and turn it upside down. Then copy it. Your brain will resist for a while because the image feels “wrong.” But if you focus solely on the details, you may be surprised by the result.

“I firmly believe that given good instructions, drawing is a skill that can be learned by every normal person with average eyesight and average eye-hand coordination.”

Betty Edwards firmly believes that everyone can learn to draw.

So does Dan Roam, although his ambitions in The Back of the Napkin are far less artistic than Edwards’. Roam also encourages his readers to think more visually:

“Visual thinking means taking advantage of our innate capacity to see—both with our eyes and our mind’s eye—in order to discover ideas that might otherwise remain invisible, develop those ideas intuitively and quickly, and then share them in ways other people can instantly grasp.”

That is why Roam illustrates ideas through simple comics and relies on one powerful principle: simplify the story.

To visualize ideas, problems, or approaches, Roam first has to think them through and reduce them to their essential components. This process disciplines his thinking while helping him simplify complexity. He also uses an intentionally simple visual language that invites imitation.

Simplification is a working method from which your own visual storytelling skills can greatly benefit.

Become a Visual Storyteller in Your Next Meeting

Why not try being a visual storyteller at the flipchart during your next meeting? But not so fast—first, consider these steps:

• Review the text of your presentation for vivid, image-rich language. Use words that can easily be translated into pictures. Great storytellers speak actively and visually.
• Translate abstract words into strong visual concepts. Use analogies and metaphors. Identify the key moments in your presentation and assign fitting symbols to them—simple images you can quickly sketch or doodle.

And don’t be afraid of your ten-year-old alter ego. Practice makes progress, and your colleagues are probably not much better at drawing either. So be brave… or keep reading.

Here are a few inspiring book recommendations to get you started:

• Betty Edwards is a brilliant teacher, as she proves in Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, packed with fascinating exercises.
• Dan Roam’s The Back of the Napkin is not only visually delightful and entertainingly written, but also so motivating that you immediately want to pick up a pen.
• Sunni Brown demonstrates creative doodling techniques in The Doodle Revolution: Unlock the Power to Think Differently.
• Petra Sammer shows in Between the Lines – How Smart Brands Use Story to Win Markets and Build Trust how visual storytelling can create powerful stories for PR and marketing.

This text was written by a human; AI tools were used for translation, spelling, and grammar review. Photo by Wu Yi on Unsplash.