As I’ve mentioned previously, for the past year or two, I’ve been trying to learn the very basics of a new skill each quarter – stuff like playing the piano, or chess, or pool.  Three months of chipping away daily seems to be enough to get off to a pretty good start on most skills.  And for some (like with pool, where I went from horrific to merely pretty bad), a good start turns out be all I really want.  Whereas others (like with playing the piano, which I realized I actually love), I end up keeping as a permanent part of my routine.

One reason I started doing these quarterly projects was that I had a laundry list of random skills I’d always wanted to at least try to acquire.  But another reason, one that I think has actually become the primary driver as I’ve continued to do this, is that I wanted to regularly suck at something.

Looking back on my younger self, I see that I was lucky to excel quickly at a bunch of things, and that I wisely and diligently invested a bunch of time and effort on developing those areas over the years.  But, conversely, I also see that I was probably far too quick to jettison anything I didn’t crush right away.  I’d just assume that, if I didn’t stand out immediately, I probably never would, so what was even the use of trying?  And, as a result, I never really spent as much time as I should have in the hard and embarrassing and frustrating early stages of being terrible at something new.

So, I guess, I’m making up for lost time, and trying to find things now where I can practice sucking, day in and day out.  Which makes this quarter’s project—drawing—particularly good.  Because I really, really can’t draw.  Like, you know how, when you’re six, you draw stick figures, and then you move on?  Well, I never moved on.

Still, at the start of October, I set to work.  Per the instructions in one of my drawing books, I memorialized my starting point with three pictures: one of my hand, another a self-portrait drawn from mirror reflection, the third a portrait drawn from memory.  For that third, I drew Jess.  Or rather, I tried to draw Jess.  I really did.  I spent a good thirty minutes drawing an eyebrow, and then erasing it because it wasn’t quite right, and then trying again.  And, at the end of a half hour, I had a cartoonish face that looked nothing even vaguely like Jess.  Though it did sort of look like a picture a kindergartener would draw of their kindergarten teacher and then bring home for their parents to post on the fridge.

Yet from that rough start, I’ve been putting in the work.  And though I’m still pretty terrible, every so often, I’m starting to surprise myself.  This evening, I drew another attempt at a hand – this one with the palm up, and the fingers curled in, a position that required foreshortening the fingers to make them appear correct in perspective.  And, holy crap, my picture came out kind of looking like my hand!

At this point, I’m still a good ways off from becoming the next Van Gogh.  Though, fortuitously, I also recently discovered, and was heartened and fascinated by, the story of how Van Gogh himself became Van Gogh.  Apparently, Vincent had never even really tried drawing for most of his life.  And then, when he was 27 years old, his brother Theo talked him into it.

As Vincent later wrote to Theo:

“At the time you spoke of my becoming a painter, I thought it very impractical, and would not hear of it.  What made me stop doubting was reading a clear book on perspective, Cassange’s Guide to the ABC of Drawing, and a week later I drew the interior of a kitchen with stove, chair, table and window – in their places and on their legs – whereas before it had seemed to me that getting depth and the right perspective into a drawing was witchcraft or pure chance.”

Vincent Van Gogh, who sadly died young at 37, spent the last ten years of his life, 1880-1890, becoming an artist.  The first two years of which he spent just teaching himself how to draw.  Drawings from the start of that stretch, like his 1880 Carpenter, are plagued with proportion problems, and a slew of other issues.  But by two years in, he’s making drawings like his 1882 Old Man Reading, has figured out how to make pictures at least technically work.  Five years of practice, and he’s drawing stuff like the 1885 Digger, is painting in earnest, and has really become Van Gogh, is putting out the masterpieces we all know and love.

Which is pretty inspiring.  And I was further encouraged in my hand attempts by Van Gogh’s own working and re-working of that same challenge.  In 1885, when he had already hit his stride, he was still doing sketches like Three Hands, Two Holding Forks, trying to figure out how to make hands look just right.  Even at the very end of his short life, as he was sketching drafts of some of his most famous works, like his 1890 Sower, his sketches for the painting are surrounded with a slew of carefully drawn hands in all kinds of positions.

So perhaps I shouldn’t completely write myself off, despite the slow and late start.  And even if drawing turns out to be one of those quarterly projects that largely ends once the quarter does, too, it has already given me a much greater appreciation of real artist’s work, and is (at least slightly) changing the way I look at the world around me.  But, most of all, it’s reminded me that, even for something that really, really isn’t in my wheelhouse, diligent practice actually can make a difference.  It’s been truly excellent practice at sucking at something, bad, yet sticking with it nonetheless.