There I was, reading through a pile of messages on one of the art-related mailing lists I frequent, when I tripped over a comment from another poster, that hit me right between the eyes. What the fellow... I think his name was Byron... said that impressed me, was something like "Draw until you want to draw."
When I began painting in 1996, one of my big plans was to devote some effort to learning how to draw and sketch properly. I went out and purchased a sketch pad, and made a couple drawings... but they seemed so crappy and inferior next to my paintings, that after a couple pages, I set the sketchbook aside. I didn't throw it away, though... in fact, I still have it today... and am finally working my way through it, after many years of its sitting on a shelf, in various drawers, bookcases, etc.
Over the intervening years, I made numerous false starts at drawing. Each time I would go out and purchase or scrounge another sketch pad. I guess that I either couldn't remember where I had stashed the other pads, or I was looking for just the 'right' paper... beats me.
Then in the summer of 2002, after I had worked in virtually every other traditional medium, for reasons I am unsure of, I finally began to draw and sketch in earnest. By then, counting small 'sketch' sized watercolour blocks, pieces of museum board, canvasboard, and just about every conceviable type of drawing, ink and charcoal paper... I had easily over 1,000 pages lying around. I decided to use up every sheet of paper... however long it took.
The interesting thing about the statement "Draw until you want to draw", to me at least, is that even when I finally got myself to drawing and sketching consistently... after around seven years of painting... I still had to 'force' myself to 'start'... every day.
So it was at about this time, and state of mind, that I tripped over Byron's comment... "Draw until you want to draw."
Now, I don't know if this ideas was original to Byron, or if someone else said it before him. To me, that is not important. What is important, is that I was able to recognise that I was probably not the first person to have 'wanted to want to draw', but had run into the strange reality, that there was a barrier to be overcome between 'wanting to want to draw', and 'wanting to draw', and that possibly the means to overcoming that barrier, was perserverence.
Gradually, over the past several months, I have begun to notice that the more I draw, the easier it becomes, and the more I actually 'want to draw'. Drawing and sketching freehand, from life and from imagination, seems to be a qualitatively different activity than painting... at least now, in the 'beginning'. Whether or not the qualitative experience of painting vs. drawing will change, once drawing has been completely acquired, is yet to be seen.
Now for a quick change of subject.
Back when I began 'reading art'... trying to figure out what other people thought it was about... I stumbled across a book... the only book on theory that resonates with me (that I understand) in a second hand bookstore in South Haven Michigan. It was priced around a dollar, so I bought it. In the couple hundred art books that I have purchased or otherwise acquired in my life, this is one of the very few that I would never consider selling or throwing away: 'The Principles of Art', by R G Collingwood, published in 1938.
One of the ideas discussed in this book, is the disfference between 'art' and 'craft'. I began wondering which of these, art or craft, might possibly be more related to my 'resistance' (if that is the right word) where drawing is concerned. I still do not have an answer, but I do believe the question is one worthy of consideration.
As far as the 'person independent' differences between painting, etc., and drawing... I don't think there are any. Both are about equally amenable to 'art', and 'craft'. Where 'myself' as an individual is concerned, I suspect that the resistance/ avoidance/ procrastination factor where drawing is concerned, is a function of 'craft'... but... perhaps... just perhaps... drawing, at least the way I practice it, is more demanding of craft, in order to achieve the 'escape velocity' necesary, for 'art' to become functionally possible.
Much non-representational work, that might either pass itself off as art, or actually be art, when done in paint... winds up being nothing more than a bunch of scribbbles, when executed with pencil, on paper.
I figure that by the time I work my way through the remaining 500 or so pages of paper I have sittting around my workshop, I might have a better idea of how art and craft relate to drawing... for myself, at least.
Good advice... "Draw until you want to draw"... until the desire to draw, has been permanently kindled... in spite of whatever initial psychic resistance, one meets.