Picking Up Drawing Again | Diff's Pilgrimage Notes

I started learning the basics of drawing, sketching, and color in middle school and continued with three years of foundational training in high school. In college, I gradually shifted away from drawing and into design. Over the past twenty-plus years, I’ve continued to draw off and on. But I often find that my drawing, just like my design work, always stays on the surface and doesn’t go deep. My fundamentals aren’t solid, and I often skim over critical parts.

Back then, drawing carried the pressure of school admissions and career concerns. Now, I can draw purely out of interest and passion, unburdened by reality.

I have mixed feelings about my unfinished pieces. One moment, I enjoy them and feel at ease; the next, I want to crumple them up and toss them into the trash. Many times, I feel disgusted by my clumsy perception and limited drawing skills. On the other hand, when I look at the works of past and contemporary great artists, I feel a sense of despair and emptiness because I’m so insignificant, incompetent, and small. In the vast ocean of human art, insignificant me doesn’t even count as a drop of water.

For the first feeling, I encourage myself with Chuck Jones’s words: “Every artist has thousands of bad drawings in them and the only way to get rid of them is to draw them out.” My goal is to not worry about success or failure and just complete a thousand drawings first.

The second feeling is harder to deal with. But recently, I’ve found some enlightenment and relief from watching my son’s soccer games. His team hasn’t won a game in the second half of the year, each match ending in a crushing defeat. I imagine how many kids on this team, or on even more talented teams, will continue to play soccer seriously in the future? And how many will truly stand shoulder to shoulder with the legends in history? It seems to be the same issue I face with the pressure from the giants of art. But what’s really important? It’s about running, challenging, winning or losing in the present. It’s about enjoying the fun in that.