How to Draw Without Talent by Danny Gregory

Author:Danny Gregory
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2019-11-25T16:00:00+00:00

Drawing without drawing.

Recently, I had a mindful moment in an unlikely place. I had to go to a government office to renew a document. It was a large room filled with rows of chairs facing a series of steel desks with computers and clerks. Not Kafkaesque, just dead boring.

In my rush to make the appointment, I hadn’t brought anything to while away the time—no book, no sketchbook. All I had with me was a sheaf of important documents.

A sign on the wall read: “No phones, cameras or recording devices.” If I took out my phone to kill time, I’d be booted and have to make a new appointment for another time.

I shuffled over to an empty seat and slumped down, feeling like a snot-nosed, scuffed-kneed nine year old waiting to see the principal. Rows of people surrounded me, their faces blank, their eyes glazed. On the wall, a counter displayed a four-digit number in red letters. A number significantly lower than the one on the chit in my hand. I’d be there for a while.

I fidgeted a bit in my uncomfortable chair, then I squirmed, then I examined the boil on the neck of the man in the seat ahead of me, then I tried to calculate if the glowing number on the counter was prime. I hadn’t had lunch yet, so I spent a while listening to my stomach, too.

Then I noticed a spray bottle of glass cleaner on one of the metal tables. I thought, that’d actually be interesting to draw. I liked the way the neck curved into the body, the six concentric rings that were debossed into the plastic, the soft highlight in the middle, and the way one square side of the nozzle was a slightly darker red than the next. I had a pen in my pocket to fill out forms but no sketchbook.

I decided to draw the bottle with my eyes. I coursed slowly along the edge, looking deeply just as I would if I were drawing. I made a run around the edge of the label, a contoured path with one continuous line. Then I jumped to the edge of the blue trigger, cruising into the hollows that fell into shadow, peering in to see every detail I could pull out. I trekked up the side, then slowed myself across an unpunctuated stretch. Move too quickly, I told myself, and you miss something. I downshifted, making myself maintain the same pace no matter how dull the landscape. I arced back up, skated around the edges of the letters on the label, then up and down the corrugations on the cap.

A chair squeaked. I looked up. Numbers flipped on the counter. It was my turn! Twenty-five minutes of my life had been compressed into pure, fleeting pleasure. I capped my mental pen, gathered my papers and approached the clerk on a cloud.

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