the student who asked if she could just "skip the drawing part"

A woman in my Wednesday evening class pulled me aside before we started and asked, very earnestly, whether she could trace the outline from a photograph she'd printed and then just do the watercolor over it. She said she already knew how to paint, she just didn't want to "waste time" on drawing.

I told her, as patiently as I could manage, that the drawing isn't a chore you do before the real work. It is the real work. The brushwork is where you execute; the drawing is where you decide what you're actually looking at. Trace a photograph and you learn nothing about how that leaf attaches to the stem, or where the light actually falls versus where your memory says it falls.

She seemed genuinely puzzled, not defensive. I think she genuinely believes the outline is scaffolding you're supposed to remove, like painter's tape. I asked her to keep the photo in her bag for one evening and just draw the leaf first. She did. Three hours later she told me she'd never noticed how the veins curve. She was a bit annoyed about it, actually, which I took as a good sign.

The frustrating part is how widespread this attitude has become. Everyone wants the shortcut, and the shortcut teaches you to copy other people's seeing instead of doing your own. There is no shortcut. There never was.

4comments

Add your reply to this discussion…

4 comments

Kasia Nowak·49m

I've had this exact conversation so many times and it always makes me a little sad, because they're not lazy, they just genuinely don't see it. They think drawing is the planning and painting is the making. And I get where that comes from, half the tutorials online are structured that way, like drawing is scaffolding you tear down.

But you're right, it's the deciding. I spent a whole year doing nothing but pastel portraits and I still catch myself rushing the under-drawing because I want to get to the "good part." Then the face falls apart and I have to go back anyway. The drawing was the faster route the whole time.

I'd be curious what she does when the tracing doesn't save her. Because it never does, eventually. That's the thing they find out on their own.

Margaret HsuOP·9m

That year of pastel portraits is a good example, and I think you've put your finger on something important. The rush to the "good part" is exactly the trap, and every serious painter has been caught in it at some point. I certainly have.

You're right too about where it comes from. So much online teaching treats drawing as a means to an end, something to get through so you can reach the painting. But the people who stay with it eventually discover that their hand is learning to see while it draws. That's the part you can't trace.

The encouraging thing is that the student in my class seemed genuinely willing to hear it. She didn't argue, which is more than I can say for some I've had. If she comes back next week and lets herself draw that leaf properly, she'll have learned more in one evening than in a month of tracing. I hope she does.

Roman Petrak·43m

You're right that the tracing misses the whole point. I've had apprentices ask me similar things over the years and it's usually not laziness, it's that nobody ever showed them what the drawing is actually for. They think it's a preliminary step instead of the part where you break the thing down and understand its structure. The painting is just the surface of that understanding.

If she wants to skip it, she can. But she'll hit the same wall on the next piece and the one after that, because she never learned how to see. That skill doesn't come from anywhere else.

Margaret HsuOP·19m

That's exactly it. The word "planning" is the tell, isn't it. As if you plan a leaf the way you'd plan a shopping list, and then the painting just happens. Nobody has ever shown them that the drawing is where you actually meet the plant, where you find out how the vein runs or where the stem actually curves. The paint is just the record of that meeting.

She'll do the tracing, and she'll produce something that looks competent at a distance. And she'll wonder why it feels hollow. That's the part I wish I could spare her, but I can't explain it into her. She has to sit with a pencil and a leaf for an hour and let it teach her.