Draw Outside of Your Box

January 2, 2020

When I was 4 years old, I spent one morning in a cousin's kindergarten class. The subject of the day was dinosaurs, and when I saw the paper and crayons, I was excited. I was in a school for the very first time, and they were going to teach me how to draw dinosaurs. How cool was that?!?

"Okay, draw your dinosaur now," the teacher announced. I was startled. How can I draw a dinosaur if no one shows me how? I guessed the big kids had learned last week. So I moved near a dinosaur picture, took a deep breath, and picked up a crayon.

When it was time to stop, I sat back and looked at my picture. I saw a bunch of sharp-pointed scribbles, nothing like what I had intended to draw. It didn't look like a dinosaur at all! My eyes filled with tears. The teacher came over. "So," she said gently, glancing at the poster I was trying to copy, "Did you draw a... stegosaurus?" I nodded, miserably. "Nice job! I can see the plates on his back!" she said. But I knew better. I knew I couldn't draw.

What I'd done, of course, was draw myself right into a box, one I didn't escape from until over 30 years later when my kids' art teacher, Pam Geffken, heard me say I had no talent in the visual arts. She was annoyed. "Why would you say that?" she snapped. I answered feebly that I tend to think like an engineer, not an artist. "Nonsense," she retorted. "I'll teach you to paint like an engineer." She challenged me to take the class for adults she taught on Tuesday nights. Within 6 short weeks, Pam had taught me the grid method for painting and thereby proved both my 4-year-old self and my 35-year-old self wrong. 

Pam was right, of course, but my 4-year-old self was right, too, in a way: At the time, I really was incapable of reproducing the art that I had in mind. That's because most talent doesn't usually bloom magically from within; often it must be pushed into us by teachers who care enough to bust through the box we draw around ourselves.

Wishing you a 2020 outside the box.

—Deb