hands down

As you can see, I am pretty comfortable with expressing myself through the medium of words.  Nearly any format (play, poem, texting, blog post, novel) will do, and I'll happily prattle away until the cows repatriate themselves.  But there are other media than these, my friends, and in those, I can struggle.

Music is my next-most-comfortable realm to live in, and I've got a good sense for it, though my technical fundamentals are lacking.  I'm working on that -- I've been studying music theory -- but it takes time, sometimes conflicts with my natural instincts (which is right and good, instincts aren't everything).  When music clicks for me, it really clicks, and through great effort, that clicking will happen more regularly in the future.

The problems really start to arise when it comes to visual media.  I'm just not a very visual person.  I didn't even have any sort of emotional reaction to a piece of graphic art until I was around 27 years old.   This was the piece:

By the German street artist El Bocho.

This piece is enormous, roughly twice the height of a person.  It's hidden behind a series of blocking walls, so there's no way to see it coming -- you just turn a corner and BAM, your entire field of view is filled with this face.  I stood, absolutely transfixed by it, for several minutes, and then couldn't really bring myself to leave it for another ten or fifteen.  It was a transformative moment for me.  It's still burned into my mind.  It always will be.  I don't know its name, and I don't care.

After that, visual art started to make a little more sense.  I visited some modern art museums, and really pushed myself to see what was going on in the artist's head.  I visited some historical art museums, and found myself appreciating the development of artistic style and technique throughout history, and then even throughout individual artist's lives.  It seemed so much simpler, so much less inscrutable than I'd once believed.

I decided to take an art class, and signed up for an online one that seemed like it would offer a really good overview.  I got myself a nice drawing pad and some good pencils, and was off to a pleasant start, but then I was given a miserable task.

My third or fourth assignment was to draw an object without looking at the paper.  I didn't understand the point of it, and the teacher didn't care to explain.  I tried anyway, but it was grueling, and I deeply resented receiving a terrible grade when I hadn't had any notion of the value of the assignment.  The teacher gave a flippant response when I complained that I didn't understand why he'd asked us to do that, and I quit the class.

I regret it.  I have many ideas that would be far better suited for expressing visually than in words, and I believe I could develop the skills necessary, even if I'm not naturally suited for it.  I just wasn't ready to blindly follow a teacher's advice at that point, although I recognize now that I should have just swallowed my pride and stuck with it, even if he wasn't the tenderest shepherd of my fragile feelings.

Sometimes, the more talented you are, the harder it is to learn something new!  The smallest setback is a huge blow to someone conditioned to success.  But it's vital to keep in mind that, if you aren't failing, you aren't learning.  It might be time to pay the old sketchpad another visit.