In every journey we take, there’s always that moment when we come back around to where we began. Poet T. S. Eliot expressed it this way in “Little Gidding”. He said, in part:

We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time.

I’ve always loved these lines, and I’ve quoted them often. For me, they’ve become especially meaningful this year. It is, you may remember, my year for EXPLORATION. That was the word I chose at the beginning of the year to guide me through my adventures in art throughout 2021. Indeed I have explored many things over the last eight months. I’ve dug down deep into my childhood memories through a bit of art therapy. I’ve studied tonalism and I’ve focused more on what I want to do with my art. Over the summer, I’ve been pushing myself with drawing practices that have left me excited, yet uncertain.

Graphite and gansai have become my “go-to” art supplies in recent weeks, and using them together has helped me loosen up a lot with my own art, and has also helped me broaden my understanding of what art can be. It’s enabled me to move to an awkward place somewhere between beginning and proficiency, a place where I can take more chances, try more things, and hopefully improve my drawing skills through the process.

Many times in the past I’ve written about the importance of developing good drawing skills. For me, drawing will always serve as a line of demarcation, setting artists apart from others. I measure my progress not by looking at oil paintings I’ve done, noting awards I’ve won, or counting favorable comments and compliments from those who view my art, but simply by one standard: how well can I draw today?

Of course, I’ve learned that it’s not a straight-forward, single line of progression. Sometimes my drawings are good; at other times I seem to backtrack and find it all but impossible  to complete even the easiest drawing projects. Sometimes I feel good about drawing. Sometimes I cringe at what’s in my sketchbook. Overall, though, I know I have learned a lot since I began this journey.

My first blog post here was a colored pencil drawing of a bowl of apples. You’ve seen it before, perhaps. Here it is again:

I was proud of this drawing back then — March 2016 — and I’m proud of it today. It represented all I’d learned in those first few months of drawing lessons. I got the basic shapes right. I had highlights; I had shadows. I drew a bowl that was not too lopsided, and I gave it a bit of texture. I successfully did what I set out to do, and I was very pleased.

This morning, I drew another bowl of apples. It differs from the first in many ways. It’s much smaller. Where the colored pencil drawing was done on a 9 x 12 sheet, today’s quick little drawing takes up only a couple inches on a page of my 5 x 7 sketchbook. I drew it with graphite then had a delightful time coloring it with my gansai. The first drawing took me hours and hours of slow, patient, methodical mark-making. Today’s little illustration took no more than ten minutes — if even that.

The first drawing is obviously a much better drawing, and it should be. I spent much more time on it. It’s a bit more realistic. The apples seem more proportionate in size. Actually, as I look at today’s bowl of apples I wonder if maybe I drew cherries instead. That’s how they look to me. In comparing these two pieces of art, it would be easy for me to say that my drawing skills have lessened over the years, that I was a much better artist in 2016 than I am now. Seriously, see for yourself! Look at my Bowl of Apples and then look at Another Bowl of Apples.

But art isn’t that easy, nor is it that obvious. These two works were made at two different times, with two different mindsets, and for two different purposes. We’re not really comparing apples to apples here. We’re comparing a new artist’s most serious work to a casual illustration by an artist with a few years of drawing experience. One drawing was made to be a genuine attempt at creating art. One drawing was done simply for the pleasure of painting. Yes, you can guess which was which, of course.

Yet as I look at both drawings, those words of Eliot come to mind. I am arriving back at where I started, so shouldn’t I have something more to show for this journey? Or, to put it another way, if this is my new starting point, aren’t I starting off farther behind from where I was in 2016? It’s all made me reflect a lot on the differences between first learning to draw and my decision now to learn to draw better. So much has changed.

• When I first began learning to draw, although I expected to fail, I was constantly striving for perfection. I wasn’t able to reach it, of course, but I aspired to make my drawings as realistic as I could. I spent hours on a single drawing. I drew the same thing over and over, looking for ways to correct mistakes. I drew, I erased, I drew again. I looked at proportions and tried to copy them as accurately as possible. I used different drawing pencils, worked on basic shading techniques, and I kept at it until I achieved good results. How exciting it was to see myself making progress.

And now? How am I approaching the process today?

• As I learn to draw better, I’m not thinking about perfection. I’m looking more for individuality, seeking to understand how I make my marks, what brings me pleasure in art, what makes me happy. I’m still noting my weaknesses, but I’m not dwelling on them. I’m testing myself a bit with lots of quick sketches, forcing myself away from all those ideas of “this is right” and “this is wrong”. It’s more of a “this is what it is” attitude, because that’s where I am and that’s where my new journey must begin.

Of course the colored pencil drawing shown here was not the first drawing I attempted. That was done about nine months into my drawing lessons. If I go back to my very first little sketchbook, I see drawings that were obviously those of a complete beginner. Maybe one day I’ll share a few of my earliest drawings. They were heavy-handed with rough, rudimentary shading and blending. But that’s where I was. That’s where I began. I was proud of every drawing I did because I knew I would improve with practice. And, oh, how I practiced! I spent many happy hours learning the basics of how to draw.

In contrast, the drawings in my current sketchbook are light, loose, and more wonky in their own way. They’re mostly scribbles. They represent me not as a serious artist who is painstakingly trying to learn, but as a somewhat more experienced artist who is pushing herself in new ways, discovering different forms of expression, and testing my limits. It’s difficult to explain, but it’s a bit like seeing how far I can go with my bad art before I completely lose my way.

My early days of drawing were marked by efforts to do my very best — again, setting standards of perfection as my goal. Today it’s not so much about trying my best, as you’ve seen from this summer’s drawings. It’s about taking it easy. It’s about seeing what I can do without trying. That probably makes no sense, but in a way, that’s what this part of the art process is all about for me.

As someone with no inherent ability for art, I have struggled. I’ve made good drawings, but they’ve required considerable time and effort. It’s never come easy for me. This is what I’m exploring now — how to make art easier, how to let go of all my high expectations and learn to love what I can do naturally. Sure, with time and patience, I can draw a good bowl of apples like I did back in 2016. It was a successful drawing, but it was not easy. It’s much more fun — and more personally rewarding — to make a drawing like the apples I did this morning. It’s not great, but it’s not awful, really, and the key point here is that it was easy.

So, I guess I’ve come around to the point where I can now explore art at a more natural level, a level where it’s easier, a level where it’s more restful and relaxing, a level where I don’t have to struggle with doing my best but where I can have fun just letting go and doing what comes naturally.