When I draw, I normally choose objects or ideas that I find interesting and challenging, and I’ll also typically try to include some type of a desired learning outcome. Sometimes I’ll choose a specific drawing technique, other times a certain object, or a particular effect that I want to work on. Another thing I’ll periodically do is follow a lesson plan out of a book or online course, also with the intention of getting better and gaining different perspectives on drawing and visual art in general. Over the past several weeks, I’ve been slowly working through an interesting online course that explores various drawing techniques using graphite pencils. One of the things that the instructor of said course does is ask the student to draw rather unusual objects, with the goal of learning how to achieve certain visual effects. So far in the course, I’ve drawn a bolt, a paintbrush, a green pepper, and a hammer, just to name a few of his subjects. The most recent task in the lesson plan was to to draw a glass of water. Seriously? A glass of water? I don’t want to draw a glass of water. That doesn’t sound interesting at all.

“I don’t wanna!” Have you ever heard this? Or said it yourself? I sure have. We often picture small kids saying this, maybe when they don’t want to go to school, do their homework, or clean their rooms. In actuality, though, adults are equally guilty of this, myself included. We often say that we don’t want to go to work, or go to the gym, or clean the bathroom, or change the oil in the car, or any number of other necessary tasks. In our house, we have had somewhat tongue-in-cheek conversations about this with our kids when they express frustration with their having to complete their school work or household chores before goofing off with their various leisure activities. As the conversation goes, we tell them that those feelings won’t get any better as adults – we do things we don’t want to do all the time, like going to work, paying the bills, and keeping the house in order. Who wouldn’t rather go do something fun, and clean the house some other time?

There may be a lot of reasons why we “don’t wanna” with a particular thing; maybe it’s difficult or uncomfortable, maybe it’s tedious, maybe there is some kind of underlying condition that makes it unappealing, or maybe it’s a task we genuinely dislike. Like going to the dentist. I hate going to the dentist. For me, though, underneath the superficial feeling of “I don’t wanna”, I do actually want to do the things that I do, at least for the most part. I might superficially say that I don’t want to go to work, because getting to work can be kind of an ordeal, airport terminals are loud and crowded and annoying, and I know I’ll be worn out after a few days of flying multiple legs every day, crossing time zones, sleeping in hotels, and so on, all while missing life at home. At the same time, I like my job and I’m good at it. I also like that I make a reasonably good living, and can help provide a nice life for my family. These are things that I want for myself and my family. The same could be said for many other things. The gym? No, I don’t feel like going a lot of the time; I’m tired! However, underneath that, I want to be fit and healthy, I want to look good, and I want to be strong. Again, underneath the superficial “I don’t wannas” are things that I do want for myself, so I do it. The dentist? Very unpleasant. But I want my teeth to remain in my head, so I go. You get the idea – one could follow this same thought train with many different tasks and activities.

So, back to my glass of water. Still not wanting to do it, I was tempted to skip the lesson altogether and move on to the next one. But before I did that, I took a moment to ask myself why I was resisting this particular lesson; I had done numerous other lessons with objects that were a lot less interesting than this one. Being honest with myself, the reason why I didn’t want to do the lesson wasn’t because the object was boring; it was because the instructor wanted the students to use a drawing technique that I like less than others. Furthermore, the instructor chose rather unusual materials for this particular lesson that I didn’t have, requiring me to make do with what I did have, thus making it more difficult to achieve the desired effect. Because I expected it to be tedious and difficult and the results questionable, I deflected the idea of doing it with the excuse that it wasn’t an interesting subject. So, I gave myself a little internal scolding, and set out to draw my glass of water.

How did it go? At first, it was a lot like I expected it to be. The first attempt, well, let’s just say it ended up in the recycling bin. The second attempt quickly became a page full of practice at free-hand drawing of a tricky ellipse after I messed up the first one. Which is ok; my sketch books are full of little experiments or doodles or part-task practice sketches of a tricky part of a bigger project. Nothing unusual about that. As I went on, I found myself enjoying the practice at the drawing technique that I was initially resistant to using, and appreciating the many subtle nuances of the glass of water. In the end, it was, dare I say, a fun drawing. I felt like I learned something, and was reasonably happy with the result.

After I finished my drawing, I thought a little more on why I had an internal debate over whether or not to do it. It’s a silly drawing – who cares, really? In the end, though, I realized something that I thought to be fairly important – I had lost sight of my intention. Why do I draw at all? Why do I use part of my always-limited spare time to do it in the first place? I do it to develop and exercise my mind, to be always learning, and to have a creative outlet. Sure, I want to get better and achieve good results, but the real meat of it, for me, is in the process. Instead of being mindful of that, I got caught up in apprehension over achieving a poor result, because I thought it was a task I couldn’t do well and didn’t have the materials for. But, by embracing the challenge and being grateful for the time and ability to work on it, I found a good learning opportunity, both for drawing and for my own mind. And that was a wonderful thing.

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