Reading this has further diminished what little hope I still have of ever being able to draw. My own experiences and difficulties don’t seem to correlate at all with anything that you describe. (I had to be reminded to look at my paper more during gestures; I caught myself feeling so rushed that there wasn’t time to look away from the model—the upside-down thing my art class did once in highschool, and my attempt came out considerably worse than rightsideup...)
I’ve been pondering whether or not to respond with words of encouragement. Some people do have a genuinely hard time drawing, and you may be one of those people.
But I think if you have a skilled, flexible teacher, they will probably be able to identify the particular things you’re having issues with, and have you work around them. I don’t know how to locate a “good” teacher though.
The classes I’m teaching have been small so far (3-4 people a time). It’s become clear that making them much larger would dramatically reduce my ability to provide individual feedback. Most drawing classes I’ve been to were between 10-25 people. Improvement happened, but on a much longer timescale.
Mental-roadblock-space is large, and I can’t cover all of it here. But I think if you can find a good mentor willing to work with you in a small class size (5 or less) then you (and they) can figure out in 4 hours of so if your roadblocks can be worked around.
Crud.
Reading this has further diminished what little hope I still have of ever being able to draw. My own experiences and difficulties don’t seem to correlate at all with anything that you describe. (I had to be reminded to look at my paper more during gestures; I caught myself feeling so rushed that there wasn’t time to look away from the model—the upside-down thing my art class did once in highschool, and my attempt came out considerably worse than rightsideup...)
I’ve been pondering whether or not to respond with words of encouragement. Some people do have a genuinely hard time drawing, and you may be one of those people.
But I think if you have a skilled, flexible teacher, they will probably be able to identify the particular things you’re having issues with, and have you work around them. I don’t know how to locate a “good” teacher though.
The classes I’m teaching have been small so far (3-4 people a time). It’s become clear that making them much larger would dramatically reduce my ability to provide individual feedback. Most drawing classes I’ve been to were between 10-25 people. Improvement happened, but on a much longer timescale.
Mental-roadblock-space is large, and I can’t cover all of it here. But I think if you can find a good mentor willing to work with you in a small class size (5 or less) then you (and they) can figure out in 4 hours of so if your roadblocks can be worked around.