14/08/2026
When I was nine years old and living in Pakistan, my grandfatherâs chauffeur drove me to school every day. After a year had passed, my grandfather told me that today, he wanted me to tell the driver how to get to school.
Ninety minutes later, we ran into the Indian/Pakistan border. I had guided us out of the country.
Thank God for Roger L. Easton, the inventor of GPS.
Since I moved away from New York, I have relied on that computer lady to tell me exactly where to go anyhow to get there.
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All these decades later, I am just as lost behind the wheel of my car as I was in the backseat of Granâs Mercedes. I do as Iâm told and retain nothing.
Which brings me, inevitably, of course, to drawing.
Over the last few years, I have spent a fair amount of time and effort trying to teach people how to make art. Iâve led workshops, written books, made videos, and taught courses at Sketchbook Skool.
Personally, I never learned much of anything from those step-by-step diagrams in art instruction books or in âwatch me paintâ demos.
Following someoneâs suggestion to first draw a circle and then draw two more circles and then add a triangle and then erase this bit and that till it looks like an old sea captain just has nothing to do with why I draw.
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Instead, I think the way to teach people is to release a secret catch thatâs hidden deep inside themâthe catch that locks them down with a paralyzing fear of making a mistake.
They are so concerned that their drawings wonât look exactly like what they are trying to draw that they canât get off their duffs and start making some marks on paper. They so badly want to be able to pick up a pencil and immediately draw like da Vinci that anything less than perfectly photorealistic seems pointless and defeating.
Instead of playing and experimenting, they waste a bunch of time saying they have no talent, canât draw a straight line, are so stupid, and so on.
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But if you can just reach that catch and unlock it, the world of possibilities swings open for them. Suddenly, they realize that drawing isnât just a way of making nifty wall decorations or proving you have some innate talent. Itâs how you see the world.
All cameras capture the same sorts of images but all artists make things differently. As Oscar Wilde put it, âBe yourself. Every one else is taken.â
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One man wrote to us at Sketchbook Skool recently and said, âBefore I sign up for your course, can you guarantee that youâll teach me to draw?â I told him, um, absolutely not. Only he can guarantee to teach himself to draw.
One less customer, I guess.
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So how do you teach people to make art?
Well, you start by turning off the GPS lady. You canât draw if Iâm holding your hand. Instead of turn-by-turns, you start by inspiring them with some postcards of wonderful places other people have sent back from their travels, and then you let them push off in a random direction.
In the driveway, you might teach them a couple of simple principles like negative space and how to take measurements, but you explain that these arenât really rules; theyâre just helpful suggestions to grasp at when you worry youâre going off the rails.
Then you hang out in the back seat and encourage them to keep going, and throw out a few gentle suggestions, to maybe slow down on the curves a tad, and to stop pumping the gas and the brakes at the same time.
You tell them to loosen up and not clutch the pen so tight.
You point out where they made an interesting turn, and you talk them back on track when they think they are hopelessly off the road.
You show them that if they just keep going, they will always end up somewhere new and interesting and probably not the place where they thought they were headed.
And the driving metaphor finally runs out when you tell them that they can and should take risks and be brave, that no one ever died making a drawing, no matter how âbadâ it was.
The key is to build their confidence. To let them know that they can do it.
If you have confidence, then you can start to let yourself come out, the self that has been watching the world through your eyeholes all these years, that has noticed odd little things. that feels deeply about certain matters, that doesnât necessarily speak in words, and that wants, really badly, to share its POV with the world â if only youâll let it.
You canât force that voice and vision or even describe shortcuts to it. You just have to let it feel safe and have ample opportunity to stick its head out from that deep hole in your soul.
Itâs up to you.
Your mom taught you to walk. But you taught you to run.
Your dad taught you to drive in a parking lot. But you taught you to drive down the I-10 while checking your email, singing along with Beyonce, applying lip gloss, arguing with your husband, and remembering to buy milk.
There are no shortcuts or instruction books to being a human being â or to being an artist. Every single day is a lesson, and the skool year never ends.
