Perseverance is not a long race; it is many short races one after the other.

Walter Elliot

I had an old friend visit at the weekend. It was one of those catch-ups that I look forward to, as many of my friends are not local (this particular one lives in China) and so we rarely meet up.

That’s life. We’re all busy, but it does make catch-ups with friends all the more special.

We chatted about all sorts of things, and inevitably we ended up talking about art. He’s an “old school” role-player like myself, so I’m always hungry for feedback on my latest project from a fellow geek (‘Dragon’s Lair’ below).

One comment I often hear from people is “I wish I could draw.” (To which, I usually reply “you can!” and then they look at me dubiously, as if I am making some supportive but somewhat insincere platitude that friends often share to encourage).

But everyone really can.

What people see is often what the sketcher is most proud of, and that’s typically the final version they were working on.

What people don’t see are all the glorious failures that came before that version.

I say “glorious” because those failures were all useful lessons that helped you along the way. Without them, the final version would simply not mean what it does to you.

I’ve shown you the finished sketch above, but the sketch below shows you the glorious failures too. You can see where I’ve experimented with textures, got things wrong, changed the characters, messed up the composition, and so on.

I guess what people really mean when they say “I wish I could draw” is “I wish I could learn from my failures.” For me, that’s the essence of drawing and improving – the glorious failures are part of the journey.

The failures helped me improve and all that time and effort put in makes the final version all the more worthwhile.