Drawing is seeing.
The mind isn�t too demanding. It has never paid too much attention to what it sees. Often it will be satisfied with a little conventional sign�it isn�t necessary to copy things exactly�a square will suffice for a window, a circle will do for a head. The mind knows what you mean. Words would serve just as well.
One doesn�t get to know an object any better from just seeing it than one learns a language from just hearing it.
Children, people in general, don�t ever try to copy an object, let alone study it. They teach each other conventions to represent this or that�a house, the sun�and draw those. The conventions have little to do with what our eyes see and they don�t lead anyone to study it. In fact, they lead away from the study. Our mind works not with images but with ideas and the conventional sign is quicker and handier at causing the idea of a house or the sun in your mind than the real, complex, unexamined image.
Mostly, the millions of images bombarding our mind all day are a nuisance. They actually get in the way of our thinking, just as talk does. We don�t want images, we want meaning. Up to very recently in history there didn�t seem to be much point in looking closely at things; and most of the objects themselves were left almost unknown�unperceived. Humankind had collected some �facts� about each object in addition to the image of it�that the needles on the rose-stems pricked, that the flame burned, that a rock was heavy, etc. And one �knew� those �facts� and maybe by chance discovered another; but otherwise went no further in his relations with objects.
Now, if you want to draw, to copy what you see, you must look at it more closely than you ever did. Remember that though you have often seen it you have never looked at it. To know it you shouldn�t consult your mind, which has a big mouth but knows nothing about the matter. Your mind will want you to simplify as you work and to make the image homey and familiar. You have to resist that advice. Turn off your mind. It takes practice but you must draw only what you see.
And everywhere your mind will interfere, tell you to abbreviate here, correct there, because that mind thinks it knows better. Don�t listen; only look. Copy exactly what you see. Be a slave to that image.
When you are done and have that drawing made, it will strike you as confusing, muddled, incredibly complex, not at all meaningful. You will hear your damned mind snicker. With some coaxing you will probably get it to play along and project depth into your drawing as it would a real �image�. But the drawing will not seem successful because it will have no more meaning than a much simpler version of itself, and it will make no aesthetic impression whatever.
You will put it into a folder but whenever you see it again you will be puzzled. It looks so much like the object you were copying and yet is so inarticulate, so dead. If it weren�t for the existence of many beautiful, suggestive drawings you might be led by your experience to conclude that drawing the object as it appears is a waste of time. Nobody really wants exactly that. After all, they have never looked at the �real� one, so why should they look at your copy of it?
So why copy things at all? If our aim is to communicate something, and simple representations of the object, even symbols, mean more, penetrate a mind quicker and easier, then there can be no justification for collecting so much superfluous visual data. We go out on a reporting mission and come back with a thousand pages. But what is wanted is a summary.
It is true that communication is the aim�though remember that it is in this case an aesthetic impression you want to make. Precisely you are not trying to say something. For that you have a tongue and a pen.