A meme I saw on Facebook recently struck something of a chord with me. An artist had grumbled about people saying they admired his talent and wished they could draw. He wasn’t being ungrateful, it was the assumption that he had a special talent he was born with, and that making art was easy for him. The problem with the notion of talent is that it takes away from the hard work an artist must do to learn his/her craft. Drawing and painting is NOT easy, even for someone very skilled at it. It LOOKS easy because they have worked so hard, just as a skilled carpenter makes woodwork look easy.
However, ‘talent’ isn’t everything. I have known people who seem to have been born with talent and they seem to take it for granted, to feel as if they don’t have to work on it and improve. One was disgusted with a grade he was given at college. “Merit? That was DISTINCTION level work!” People with what is thought of as natural talent are a rare breed and for the most part they don’t appear to fulfil their potential. As pointed out in ‘Art and Fear’ by David Bayles and Ted Orland, ‘newspapers love to print stories about five-year-old prodigies giving solo recitals, but you rarely read about one going on to become a Mozart.’
‘Talent’ does play a part, but I agree with illustrator Chris Achilleos. In a 1986 book of his artwork, ‘Sirens,’ the text, says Achilleos believes talent ‘is not as rare as most people seem to believe. By talent he means visual imagination which many children have in at least as great a measure as himself but have no cause to develop it.’ That cause will vary between individuals. In Achilleos’ case it was the shock coming as a young boy from a happy home in Cyprus to live in a strange country – England - making him take refuge in drawing. Others, like myself, may have that imagination sparked by seeing some beautiful, inspiring artwork, and that doesn’t necessarily mean a Rembrandt or a Constable or a Freud, it could be a book illustration or a comic or pretty much anything. My own moment of truth was a full-page drawing from a Marvel comic, a black and white monthly magazine called the Savage Sword of Conan, adapting a story by Robert E. Howard called ‘The Slithering Shadow.’ Pencilled by John Buscema and inked by Alfred Alcala, this page is a masterpiece of comics art.
The fact of the matter is that talent, like inspiration, talent is 99% perspiration. It is hard work learning how to draw, learning to look properly, learning how to use the tools your trade, learning what to draw and what to leave out and all the other things that make up the processes of making art. If it were easy everyone would do it and because it isn’t people assume it must be a special gift only possessed by the chosen few. It isn’t, it is having the will to put in the work necessary to learn the necessary skills, as suggested by the adage that to become skilled in something it takes 10,000 hours of practice. And to do that to have to want to do the work. Perhaps the word ‘talent’ should be replaced by the word ‘desire’ or ‘will.’
As for the second part of the comment that sparked the grumble – ‘I wish I could draw’ – well, if you really wished that, you’d probably be drawing!
‘Art and Fear’ by David Bayles and Ted Orland is available here -
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Art-Fear-Observations-Rewards-Artmaking/dp/0961454733/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1529264278&sr=1-1&keywords=art+and+fear
‘Sirens’ by Chris Achilleos is available here -
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Sirens-Illustrations-Worlds-Great-Illustrators/dp/1903676010/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1529264070&sr=8-4&keywords=chris+achilleos
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