A bunny tries to draw… I said, “tries”!

A friendly warning: this post contains some nudes, (although your good will and imagination are probably necessary to realise they are actually nudes), so if that’s offensive for you, please don’t read on.

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You probably don’t know this, but I like drawing. And there is a very good reason you don’t know about it. That’s because I’m bad at it. Really, really bad. Having a very talented sister, who could draw “like a pro” even before kindergarten, made the fact I suck at it all too obvious to me, quite early in my life.

You know the scene where a kindergarten kid draws their family and themselves, and nobody looks anything like the real people, but the kid is so happy and proud because, in their eyes, the “people” in the drawing look just like the real ones? Then, the kid takes the drawing back home and shows it to their parents, and they are exquisitely happy, as they, too, can see themselves in the painting?

Once, I was that kid. Only for the first half, though. Because when the second half came to pass, I received an, “Oh! That’s no good. Look at your sister’s.” Yeap! Don’t do that to your kids! Good thing? Greece’s educational system has a mandatory art class from first year in grade school to last year in junior high, so as bad as I was at it, I had to keep drawing, for school, until I finished junior high.

Not an inspiring and encouraging experience, I should underline, though. You see, in kindergarten, most classmates were drawing, more or less, just as badly (or as well) as I did. But, as we were growing up, they were getting better and better, while I wasn’t. Seriously. Second year in junior high, I barely made the pass mark for the art class.

Thankfully a “crazy” new teacher substituted our until-then teacher for the third year (that’s the last year), and I suddenly became one of the best in class. Mark-wise only. My drawing didn’t get any better. What happened? Our new teacher valued out-of-the-box thinking more than our actual technique.

Real example: she gave us as a subject, “The Crucifixion”. Now, my classmates tried to picture that as well as they could. Some tried to picture three crosses with a man on each; others just focused on Christ’s cross… Yeah, try to do any of these, if you are a normal junior high-schooler, and you are doomed. There was a girl who was very good at drawing and she received a 15 (out of 20) for – in my eyes – perfectly drawing a crucified Christ.

What did I do? I drew clouds. Dark, grey clouds. Just clouds. And, at the very bottom of the picture, at around the middle, a small rectangle. The very top of the cross. Yeap. I received a 19 out of 20. Why? Because, “The lines of the rectangle are too straight, and this is unnatural.” I didn’t make such a mistake again, and you can understand why I suddenly became one of the best!

So, yeah, despite the very high marks of my last year in junior high, in actuality, nine years of lessons didn’t help. At all! That doesn’t mean the teachers were bad. Most of my classmates ended up being significantly better than they were in kindergarten. So, that says something. For the teachers, that is, but I used to believe it said something about me, too. This belief changed only quite recently!

If I hadn’t liked drawing, if I hadn’t wished I could have been good at it, my “successful” last year in junior high would have been the end of this story. The thing is, I wanted to be good at it. I’d love to be able to draw well. At least, well enough for my own pleasure. So, I did try to draw – sparingly – on my own, and every single effort resulted in my realising anew how bad I was at it. “That’s a dream I’ll never achieve, and I’d do better to give it up.”

But I didn’t. And, in my honest opinion, you shouldn’t either, whether it’s drawing, or anything else you like and love. No matter how bad you are, or think you are, keep on trying and you’ll make it. I am not writing this post to complain about how bad I’m at drawing!!! I wouldn’t do that! But I wanted you to understand – clearly – that most of you, probably, have a better starting point, right now, than I had, just a year ago.

Before what I’m going to recount here came to pass, in response to a Tweet, I posted this male nude:

Ok! Maybe, you think this was a joke. It wasn’t. Maybe, you think I could have drawn it better, with a little effort. Well… not really. I mean, it is possible that you wouldn’t have realised this is a male nude, had I not told you so, but I believe I succeeded in giving you the impression that this is a human figure. And the ones involved in the conversation where this tweet was posted did realise that. Had I tried to put some more effort into it, this success would have been jeopardised. So, this was, honestly, the best I could do.

There is a friend on Twitter, Denise, who draws and was kind enough to show me some of her drawings. She is not very confident about her drawings, but, in fact, they are good! And I loved them. And I loved that she decided to show them to me. And I found her drawings awesome and inspiring and motivating. They made me want to try drawing again. Thank you, Denise!

So, I took some lessons. Again. But, this time, I was lucky. I found a good teacher for me. You see? My schoolteachers weren’t bad. They simply weren’t the right ones for me. They couldn’t find out what would make me get better. This one was good. I have a mathematical mind. I can understand maths; I trust maths and I’m good at maths. And this teacher turned drawing into maths for me. At least part of it. This might not be the right way for you, but it surely was the right way for me.

More importantly, she taught me two important lessons. And these lessons, whatever method might work best for you, I think, can be of help to you, too.

The most important lesson was to appreciate the good points of what I had drawn. They might be minor details; they might be imperfect, and they can be improved greatly, but they are there! And, for the first time in my life, I started noticing them. Because, before then, I would make a drawing, see – all too clearly – that it was awful and that was the end of it.

And that was the second of the two important lessons. The drawing wasn’t awful. It had mistakes and problems. And she taught me to spot those and try to understand what was wrong with them, and what I could do to make them look a little better. Out of the blue, it wasn’t a one-piece drawing. It was a puzzle made up of many tinny pieces, and making any of these tinny pieces just a little better, the whole puzzle would look better.

I can’t thank her enough for those two lessons!!!

Of course she taught us some techniques, too. You see? Here I’m using “us”, because we were a class. But earlier I used “me”, because the teacher was trying to understand our individuality and work with it, to help us become better at what we were doing.

And she had us drawing cubes and balls and all the boring stuff an art class does. And yes, it’s boring. And yes, it might feel meaningless, at times, but it isn’t. Try to draw a cube you are looking at, if you have never done that, and you’ll see that your eyes don’t see reality. If you don’t pay close attention, what will end up on your paper will look nothing like a cube. That was an enlightening realisation for me. I was aware of this fact, theoretically, but it was the first time I practically realised that, indeed, what we believe we see and what we actually look at are two different things.

So, yes, drawing cubes and balls was very educational. Much more so than I’d thought it would be. After all, I was interested in drawing nudes. The course didn’t include that kind of lessons, though.

After completing the course, I tried to draw a few more cubes and balls and similar – utterly uninteresting – things. Too much time spent for, at the very best, achieving the unsatisfactory result of drawing a perfect cube. If you are into cubes, and that’s what you want to draw, then it will be a great satisfaction for you, but I’m not fond of either cubes, or balls!

Ok… I can see that smirk!

So, I decided, what the hell? I’m not drawing for class anymore, so why not try drawing what I really want to draw? So, I tried to draw a very beautiful nude guy. Please brace yourself, because a shocking image is coming and it’s not shocking in a good way!

Yeap!!! Trust me! This isn’t a squid, nor is it an extra-terrestrial life form. This is a nude human male. A beautiful one, too. Very badly drawn, indeed, but that’s what this is.

This was a disappointment. But! Remember the two lessons? So, after the first shock, I started noticing a few good points. The background, was not that badly made. And… ok, this is kind of reminiscent of a human body… and… Ok! His dick, although not nearly as beautiful as the real one is, more or less, has the right general shape. And I like dicks, so this was a very pleasurable observation.

So, I started drawing beautiful dicks. And although I needed more time to draw a dick than to draw a cube, the end result was much more fulfilling, even if the dick was slightly better than the previous one. And dick, after dick, after dick, I levelled up, and, “Yorgos KC acquired a new skill: Dick drawer – Beginner.”

And you know how some RPGs work? You fight Orcs by means of a sword only, and then you level up and suddenly your MP has risen and you can fire fireballs. Well, apparently it works almost the same with drawing, too. Almost the same. No fireballs came out of my hands, no matter how hard I tried, but when I tried to draw a body around the dick, this body was significantly better than what you see above. Maybe still not good; certainly not perfect, but significantly better, nonetheless.

And I know I said that I like dicks, but I like them mostly because they belong to men. So, finding out I can draw the body around them, too, made me even happier. And so, I started drawing bodies, too. Fingerless, faceless bodies. And they started getting better and better. And then, I decided I should draw, again, a face.

And you won’t believe it, but it was a disaster! Hehe! Ok! Not so unbelievable, I admit it! So, yes, I tried to draw another cute and beautiful guy, along with his face. And I ended up with Quasimodo with a “decently” beautiful body.

It took me some time to realise the meaning of the previous phrase, though. You see, Quasimodo is a human. Neither a squid nor E.T., but a human. So, yes, the face looked human-like. Nothing close to the beautiful face I was trying to draw, but undoubtedly a human’s face. Yay!!!

So, I continued… not-avoiding faces. And after some efforts, they started resembling – with much imagination – the original, at some points!!!

And then, I decided to do something very risky. I drew a portrait of a friend. Yeap… It took me three or four days to actually make it. Nothing that great, but, for the first time, I could actually recognise the person, in my drawing. It was them!!! It took me lots of courage, but I showed this portrait to the friend. And to my surprise, they did realise it was them. And they didn’t even think this was a mockery, or an effort to insult them! Such a good friend! But I’m really thankful for that.

And so, I continued drawing. Nude guys, with faces and, maybe, with fingers, too. And, finally, six months after drawing the mutated squid you saw above, I drew the same guy, again. This edition:

Not perfect, yet, but, well… you can see the difference. I mean, now you know you are seeing a naked guy. And you know he has fingers and not half-eaten tentacles growing out of his palms. You probably can guess he is supposed to be beautiful, although you can’t actually see that in the drawing. And, maybe, just maybe, you can guess this isn’t a very badly drawn smile, but a failed effort to depict a more complicated expression. Indeed, he isn’t smiling. He has a very cute, and slightly embarrassed smirk.

I know I have a long way to go, but I have come a long way, too. And people, if I made it that far, you can, too. Probably better and easier than me, but for sure, you can. Just draw dicks, or whatever inspires you and motivates you. What makes you feel it is worth your time and effort. And see the good points in what you’ve done, no matter how bad it looks at first glance. And I promise you that you’ll get better and better. Find the right method for you. Find the right teacher for you, if you want to take some lessons, but most of all, practice and have fun with it.

And do not let anyone discourage you, or tell you that you can’t do it. Because you can! You’ve achieved much more difficult things in you life. Trust me. Most of you were born as infants, I bet, and most of you can walk now as if you’d been born with this ability. But you weren’t actually born with it. You tried, so many times, to stand up on your feet, and failed. And when you eventually succeeded in that, you then tried to take a step and failed. But now you are walking like it’s a “talent” you were born with, despite the fact it’s an ability you put so much effort into acquiring. And! That’s a much more complicated and difficult thing to achieve. Only difference is, you weren’t discouraged from achieving it. So, yes, you can do this!!!

That’s all. Have fun, with whatever you want to be good at; have patience; be persistent, and you’ll make it happen!