I read an article that said a pencil can write 35 miles.
35 miles! I’m sure that can’t be true.
But the idea got me thinking about how keen we are to judge our drawing efforts before we’ve had time to develop our skills.
Many people give up on drawing after just a few attempts, declaring, “I can’t draw” or “I have no natural talent.” way too early on in the actual drawing practice.
That’s like judging your fitness level after a week of walking around the block, so it’d be easy to do a couple of drawings that don’t quite work out.
Drawing, like any skill, takes time and practice to develop.
A method that can help is to look at a non-emotional record of progress. It can help you keep calm and not critically self-assess your work until you’ve done a much larger body of work.
In the beginner’s drawing course, I recommend hiding your first attempts in an envelope to look back on in the future.
When progress in developing any skill is incremental, it can be helpful to have clear times to have a check-in on how things are going and to look back and see what has improved.
35 miles is a lot of shading; that’s 1,000s of contours and a bucket load of erasers!
My proposal in the last post was to try a personal New Year creative experiment.
Just one format, one medium, one subject.
I’ve been focusing on portrait structure, and anatomy with pencil on paper.
Morning Sketches from Jan 2025
Morning Sketches from Jan 2025
Morning Sketches from Jan 2025
There’s a whole story and a whole journey that would have come out of one pencil.
Not only do I remember the sketches that went well, but lots of smudging, erasing and relooking. I also remember how the sun was streaming in through the studio window when I sat down to do the third sketch and the croissant I was going to buy after my practice.
If you’re drawing with pen and ink, put a little pot on the side for empty ink cartridges.
Keep a bin for used-up paint tubes – not to judge the work but to celebrate a dedication to practice. I think it’s a nice idea just to think in terms of evidence; every artist’s journey is made up of these small records.
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Love your ideas. Thank you. Gail
Thankyou will for a small tutorial on sketching and measuring your progress
My pleasure Stephen
35 miles??
Looking at my sketching pencils I’ve probably only done about 10 miles collectively in the last 2 years!
Oh dear! Better crack on!
Thank-you for the reality check! Jude
Hi Will,
Love this post!
I’ve been ill and not drawing and painting for a while and feel that I don’t have the energy to set up a palette, the very idea of making Zorn based colour strings for my abandoned painting is sickening.
What can I do to start over?
Hey Nelle, I find if you just try painting some different coloured grounds on cnvas board or paper. Just simple blocks of colour. No pressure, you’re not trying to paint anything, you’re just getting into the groove of mixing a single colour.
Will
This is such a thoughtful perspective. I love the idea of thinking in terms of “evidence” of practice rather than judging individual pieces. The envelope suggestion for first attempts is brilliant, it takes the pressure off while giving you a real benchmark for growth later. The metaphor of a pencil lasting 35 miles really drives home how much potential one tool holds if you stick with it. Thanks for the reminder that consistency and patience are just as important in drawing as in any other skill.