Look, no rubber: the world’s most incompetent artist has drawn a bird.
The inspiration – and the skill – for this feat came straight out of a book called Draw 50 Animals by Lee J. Ames. I have purchased this book for countless children this Christmas and, having successfully used it to produce a tortoise, decided we needed one for the family. Now my daughter has drawn a horse, my son a wolf and I this creature resembling a bluetit. It feels like a small seasonal miracle.
I have always mourned my total inability to draw. As a child, how many pages did I fill with rubbish while others created perfect, life-like pictures, until I finally got the message? I have zilch artistic flair and just have to accept it. And while it’s tempting to dismiss such skill as being of no value in later life, the truth is that many jobs depend on the possession of a good eye, floristry and hairdressing to name but two.
My daughter discovered this young when her dissatisfaction with the way I arranged her hair led her to take over this responsibility from her earliest school days. I have barely been allowed near her locks since she was five.
True, I have always been able to “draw pictures” with words and express my feelings for landscape in poetry. But his cuts little ice with a child who wants her mother to draw her a duck, as I was once – only once – requested to do. The duck, or let’s call it a head with a wing and a couple of legs, went the way of the hair and said child took over the task herself, far better ducks emerging repeatedly from her more inspired hand.
Now Lee J. Ames has breathed new life into the old drawing arm. As I understand this, you start with a circle here and an oval there and build up with extra lines, and assuming the original shapes were placed correctly, there on the page is a recognisable bird. So stand by National Gallery, here I come. Or maybe I’ll just start saving credit-crunch money and cut hair.
