{"id":1623,"date":"2023-10-14T00:14:49","date_gmt":"2023-10-14T00:14:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/infundpros.com\/business\/learning-to-draw-and-the-art-of-seeing-better\/"},"modified":"2023-10-14T00:14:49","modified_gmt":"2023-10-14T00:14:49","slug":"learning-to-draw-and-the-art-of-seeing-better","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/infundpros.com\/?p=1623","title":{"rendered":"Learning to draw, and the art of seeing better"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A man named Patrick Bringley published a memoir earlier this year called All the Beauty in the World<\/em>. When his brother died from cancer, Bringley quit his job in media and became a museum guard at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Americas\u2019 largest museum. He wanted to stand still in the most beautiful place he knew. He stood still there for 10 years.<\/p>\n

I loved Bringley\u2019s book. It taught me how to get more out of museums, how to pay attention, and how to think differently about time. Since I read it (and \u2014 disclosure \u2014 began to date someone who loves to draw), I started to want to see<\/em> better. You know when you start to learn about wine, and suddenly you care where a wine is from? I wanted that, but for art, and also for life. So we started drawing: at museums, we drew the art. This is even more fun with children, so we brought my sisters\u2019 kids along. We drove to the Bruce Museum in Connecticut, sprawled out on the floor with pencils and markers, and drew until it got dark.<\/p>\n

At one point my niece Scarlett turned to my boyfriend Larry. They were drawing a Lois Dodd night painting, a peaceful view of a barn at night. \u201cWhy are you in such a hurry?\u201d she asked him, as she steadily filled her barn with dark grey. \u201cMaybe you should slow down.\u201d<\/p>\n

A few months later I asked Bringley to walk me around the Met, to record an episode of the FT Weekend podcast, which I host. I was still looking for guidance, and thought he could teach listeners, too.<\/p>\n

His advice was, basically, the same as Scarlett\u2019s: slow down. We passed through corridors that spanned tens of thousands of years, and I asked him how to avoid feeling like you just don\u2019t get it. Like you went somewhere, and you walked, and looked<\/em>, but didn\u2019t really see<\/em>. He suggested going alone. \u201cRight now, you and I are walking through Medieval Art and we\u2019re talking about things that have nothing to do with Medieval art,\u201d he told me. \u201cBut if you and I split off from each other and I said, \u2018Go look at this stuff for 15 minutes and I\u2019ll look at this for 15 minutes,\u2019 your soul could quieten down. You could start to be penetrated by it.\u201d<\/p>\n

We ended up in the Impressionist rooms, some of the busiest in the Met, in front of a Van Gogh. I asked him for his rules for contemplating a painting. His first: do nothing. Look at the details, then look at the whole thing. Don\u2019t decide if it\u2019s good or bad, because that\u2019s not even really the point, is it? Just decide if it does anything to you. \u201cAll of that,\u201d he said, \u201ctakes time and quiet.\u201d Then go away, do that with other art too, learn more, \u201cand then return, return. Keep returning.\u201d<\/p>\n

A few days later, Larry, his brother, my niece Athena and I went back to the Met. Athena, who\u2019s seven, had one rule: \u201cJust don\u2019t rush me, OK? If I\u2019m drawing something, please <\/em>let me finish.\u201d We agreed to her conditions. No one was allowed to rush.<\/p>\n

We made little books and passed them around. We drew Egyptian mummies, and Ghanaian memorial heads. We stopped to get a snack and drew each other. I drew a Lee Krasner painting and Larry drew a Josef Albers and a little girl asked to draw with us and Athena eyed her suspiciously.<\/p>\n

We went back to the Impressionist rooms, to a gallery full of Monets. Athena stood in front of his haystacks. I stood in front of his water lilies. We drew. Someone came up behind us. \u201cAre you drawing?\u201d they asked. Yeah, we said. Huh, they said. Athena asked me what I noticed. I told her that most lines go horizontally in the water, but the tree reflections go vertically. I asked what she noticed. She said that the haystack\u2019s shadows were the same size as the haystacks, but upside down.<\/p>\n

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A steady stream of people took a photo of the water lilies and moved along. They barely looked at the painting itself. Snap, turn. Snap, turn <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I looked over and Larry was writing down her phrase: \u201cWhat did you notice?\u201d Moved by her focus, I took a photo of her drawing, and suddenly noticed the scene around us. There was Athena, finishing her haystack, occasionally jostled by the crowd. Behind her was a steady stream of people taking a photo of the water lilies and moving along. They barely looked at the painting itself. Snap, turn. Snap, turn. I realised I\u2019d been guilty of this too, not too long ago. I also realised some of these people were dressed up to match the water lilies. They were taking influencer photos, with the water lilies.\u00a0<\/p>\n

This kid, a member of the screen-addled, attention-less generation post-Z, was the one standing there, quietly looking, demanding not to be rushed. Instead it was the people around her, buzzing in her ear, who weren\u2019t. The adults had forgotten.<\/p>\n

In September, Larry and I took a month off and travelled through Europe and Turkey. At this stage I was drawing real stuff, too, and humbled daily by how hard it is to draw as an adult. It was as if my hands had been developmentally arrested at six years old, but they were itchy. I\u2019ve doodled aimlessly for years, though nothing more than stars, dots, random shapes. I imagine this is why colouring books got so popular for a while. Colouring is hard for adults to mess up.<\/p>\n

In the seminal 1979 book Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain<\/em>, Betty Edwards teaches you to separate what your brain assumes something looks like from the shapes you\u2019re actually seeing. To help people see, she has students draw a piece of recognisable art that\u2019s been turned upside down. When they turn it right side up, they\u2019re shocked to see it\u2019s nearly perfect.<\/p>\n

Larry suggested I try to separate what I saw from how I thought a thing should look. Trees, it turns out, are excruciating (it\u2019s the texture). So is knowing how much detail to include in a building. So is drawing with a pen, not because you can\u2019t erase, but because you need different marks to make different sorts of shadows. Once I tried to draw a mountain and got very mad. Mountains are hard. They\u2019re made of a lot of different shapes and shadows and it\u2019s not easy to know which ones matter. Larry, laughing, suggested I squint. I glared at him, and then squinted, and it helped.<\/p>\n

Now I follow people on Instagram who teach you how to draw trees and mountains and clouds. I also started annotating my drawings to acknowledge the mistakes (\u201cI messed up the perspective\u201d) and that somehow deemed them forgivable, at least in my mind.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been posting them on my Instagram. I\u2019m not really sure why. They\u2019re not that good. But they\u2019re also not bad. I like them. I think everyone should like their weird little drawings, too.<\/p>\n

<\/source>\"\"<\/picture>
Lilah\u2019s niece and nephews at the Bruce Museum with their sketches of Josef Albers<\/span> <\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I also see more now. I wonder if a ledge is angled up or down. I notice things, like how Modigliani only sometimes painted eyes. Or how Matisse can make a face look sexy in impossibly few strokes. It\u2019s made my life more fun.<\/p>\n

Towards the end of our trip, my sister texted Larry and me. Her kids had asked to go back to the Bruce Museum and draw again, nice and slow. They found some Josef Albers squares that they liked, and they spread out. All of them drew, even the youngest, who\u2019s three, and my sister and her husband sat with them on the floor. Next time, we\u2019ll get the adults drawing, too.<\/p>\n

Lilah Raptopoulos is the host of the <\/em>FT Weekend podcast<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Read the full article here<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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