Today was illustration club. I’m a teacher, and I have this thing where I don’t really want students to hate school. I usually can’t do much about that, but this year, I have a club. It’s a good club too. We meet up once a week and we do art. There’s just the problem of students asking me the wrong question.
People who want to learn to draw, or want to improve at drawing ask a lot of questions. And they should. Some people who do art tend to find those questions annoying. This is particularly true if these questions are being asked at the exact time that these people who do art are doing art.
It’s not just students. Adults do it too. Particularly adults who want to do art. Adults ask the wrong questions more often than children do. Children tend to ask me more interesting questions.
Most of the time.
Today, a student asked me a common variation of the wrong question. One that I get a lot.
That student was not, by the way the one who asked me what I would do if I had to draw a duck mixed with an octopus.
That is the right question, on so many levels.
But about 5 minutes before the scheduled end of the club, a student raised his hand, and laid this one on me:
“Excuse me, sir. Do we go now? Time is almost up.”
I told him yes. He went. I told the rest of the class that we had 5 more minutes left in the meet, but anyone who wanted or needed to go could go now.
No one else left for at least a half hour.
That’s when I drew my ductapus, and another student drew a tree that looked like a potato. And some guy with jellyfish arms.
It was the wrong question. Without a doubt. And it’s a slightly more interesting version of that other wrong question often asked to me by adults who want to do art.
It’s something along the lines of “how much, how long,” or “how many”
“How long do you draw every day?”
“How much work do I have to do to be good at art?”
“Do I need to draw every day?”
Wrong question. You should be asking me about my ductapus.
And my answer for those people is always the same. I just shrug. “No. You do not have to draw every day.”
As a matter of fact, you don’t have to draw at all.
You get to draw.
And for all those who need to quantify what it is to create art, those who treat it like an end goal, rather than a journey in a clunky old car that bumps you off the top as often as it sends you along your way… I have something I’d like you to think about…
You are in a unique position in the universe. You, with your pen an paper, drafting worlds of stick figure and squiggle, and bringing life to this pulverized, bleached out dead tree in your hands… YOU, oh mere mortal, have been given God-like powers in secret. You are a creator.
And you don’t have to. you get to.
Now ask me a good question.
Stephen_inks 