When I was about 11 I went for a walk with my spiral bound notebook. I was at the time experimenting with pencil drawings of the natural landscape. I drew wide angle, scenic images in a very rough, impressionist style. It of course was uneducated. I had no training and would receive any until a few years later. One pleasantly warm and dry day I wandered about a half-mile down the dirt road that was one road over from ours. On this road was a pleasant looking homestead with a horse or two in a paddock which was clearly viewable from the road. I sat down on the embankment on the other side of the road and began to draw.
I had set myself the task of drawing one of the horses. In the 1-2 hours I sat there, that horse must have moved only a few feet. I imagine that most of the time I was attempting to draw it, it likely mostly slept.
I drew, erased, drew again and eventually became too frustrated with myself and my progress that I finally left the resulting image in an unsatisfactory, incomplete, state. It was at the time the longest I had ever worked on an image.
I no longer have that book and if it still exists all the images are likely faded out to near unrecognizability. I sold the notebook to a classmate for a dollar or two and then forgot about it for years.
That same year I gave up drawing altogether. I was frustrated by my inability to put what I saw or imagined down on paper in a way that I felt did it justice. Of course, my goal was unrealistic. I wanted to draw detail that I couldn’t see in the physical world and couldn’t really represent on the page.
A few years later I decided to take a class in drawing. I figured that if I was ever going to try drawing again, I had better learn something about art. Of course I learned all the basic art things like perspective, proportion, basic composition. I was nowhere near as good as most of the other students, in fact I may have been the worst. Although, I do not know for certain. I did well enough to at least pass the class though.
However, I was the only person that I recall ever getting in a fight with the art teacher. She wasn’t a bad art teacher but a bit uninspiring, technical without being personally all that interesting. Either way, she told students, “Draw what you see, not what you know.” That was the problem. She was picking apart one of my drawings, as she did all the students’ art, and she caught on my explanation of why I drew our subject for the day, a large houseplant that was in the center of the room. She repeated her line about drawing what you see. So I said, “Fine, I will show you what I see.”
I sat down, outlined the plant, the windows and some blobby shapes that didn’t particularly look like the students that were still sitting on the other side of the room. I did some rough blended shading and then I returned to the front of the room. I carefully put my drawing on her desk near the other one and stated, matter of factly, “That is what I see.”
She wasn’t particularly happy with my demonstration. She pretty obviously had never had a visually impaired student take her class before. I imagine that she never worked with a visually impaired person the rest of her teaching career.
I can only hope that I taught her something that day. Maybe too things. Vision is highly variable, that’s one. I’m also hoping that she learned too that seeing isn’t as important as understanding.
Not all my high school years are filled with cranky memories, not even from that class. There was a lady in the class she she would talk about how she hated the Beach Boys song, “Help me Rhonda.” I remember you being funny, kind and helpful. Thank you Rhonda.
