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Learning to draw using your five senses is the best way to think of drawing. Drawing is one skill that I possess that I can honestly say that I am accomplished in. I did find time while my firstborn was sleeping (it was a rare moment) to draw a contour drawing of her sleeping in her crib. It was a quick five-minute drawing but it is my favorite drawing of all that I have done.

Do I have drawings exhibited in galleries? No. Do I have a bank account supplemented by my drawing journey? No. What I do have is a living account of what my five senses tell me from one decade to the next. When I look at a landscape I drew four years ago of a view out my front door, I can still smell the grass in the September sun. I would not take a thousand dollars for that drawing. I do have very distinct memories of how I felt the first time I sat with a group of other students in front of a still life arrangement. It was a mixture of apprehension and joy of seeing a blank page. My fears were gone once the teacher only recognized the positives in my early work. This is essential, especially at first.

If you look at some of the drawings by the Great Masters including DaVinci, Michelangelo, Pisarro, and Ingres just for starters, you can see the passion they had for their subject matter that may or may not be apparent in the larger works. They are similar to journal entries of a talented author they show the building blocks and the passion. Think of drawing as just that.

The spontaneity of Michelangelo's drawings is also amazingly accurate and precise. This is what we strive for but most likely will not reach in our journey. It is important to live with this. Pisanello's drawings of horses are not self-conscious as artwork but they are joyous but immaculate renderings of an animal he was clearly passionate about.

An artist uses touch and sight most frequently but consider as you look at drawings or make them yourself just how many of the five senses are used? Can you smell the smells of the scene? Can you taste the dust as Gericault's horses speed past?

Learning to draw is a journey that never ends. I first realized this when as an art student I witnessed the joy in a professor's eyes when he or she saw an interesting aspect of a student's work. It was as if they were seeing a new way to depict an object or a figure or a feeling.

I didn't reveal any secrets of "shading" or "formulas" for making a picture of something. My apologies. There are plenty of "how to" books out there for that and they can be useful for many, even myself. But my advice is: find some object or living thing you are passionate about, get some cheap copy paper and anything that will make a mark on that paper. Use your five senses and let the marks fall where they may.

Learn more about this author, Brenda G. Koscelny.
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