My attempts to learn how to draw turned into attempts to learn how to sketch, which turned into attempts to learn how to visually break things down into shapes, which turned into learning how to use the Wacom tablet Nat gave me, which turned into how-to Inkscape tutorials.

Let me give you an example. In Inkscape, you can turn on the pressure input for the Pencil tool. With this on, Inkscape detects how hard you press your stylus on the tablet, which translates to line thickness. This makes drawing feel more fluid. However, when you turn this option on, the Pencil tool does not let you choose a “stroke” anymore but just a “fill.” This makes sense: when you use pressure, the lines you draw are indicated by pressure, not by a shape (which consists of fills and strokes in Inkscape).

I was going nuts for two days because fills and strokes in Inkscape are everything I learned - when I was working with a mouse. In other words, drawing in Inkscape with a tablet is a different animal than creating shapes with Inkscape. It’s almost like using a different program.

It took me two paragraphs to explain this to you, and I’m sure some folks are still stretching their heads. Now imagine trying to convey this without having an idea of why Inkscape behaves the way it does. And I didn’t even tell you that the tablet’s range of motion is very different than that of a mouse, and learning how to scroll with it is also an entirely different skill to learn… but you get the point.

I’ve tried to sketch in a notebook too. “What’s the problem,” I thought, “just break it down into shapes.” Ha. Haha. You think you know how to draw a circle until you actually try to draw one by hand. Draw it fast, and it looks like a broken egg on a good day; draw it slow, and it picks up bumps along the way. I’m learning that I should probably learn how to draw circles and squares by hand all over again. Needless to say, breaking things down to shape, a whole ordeal by itself, will have to wait a bit.

I think this is the problem I always had with drawing. You see, I’m a visual person. I love visual aids. I love symbols. Our brain sees symbols and not what the objects are, which means when I want to draw something, what I’m visualizing is a concept that doesn’t exist. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that learning to draw means learning to see all over again. It’s a long process, and it requires patience. Who has patience when all you need to do is to ask your AI program of choice to draw a house to get one? Not me. But I’m working on it.