Drawing is a way to reveal our visual thinking and express our creativity. However, unlike writing skills, the ability to draw tends to be perceived as a talent possessed only by a minority of gifted ones. I am not entirely convinced of this rather sad idea. I believe that everybody can learn to draw what s/he sees with accurate proportion and structure. Yes, everybody can!
Usually the common experience goes like this. We were carefree when small and we drew without much inhibition and judgment. Not long after, we were taught some visual shorthand symbols for how a flower, a cloud, the sun and so on should be drawn. We somehow accepted all these without checking against the reality by observation. (Students would smile when I tell them that I have never seen the sun look like a circle with radial lines all around it.) Gradually, good drawing skills may mean being able to copy nicely from another two-dimensional picture. These could be all the drawing experiences for most of us.
The secret to acquire basic drawing skills is only three words in a nutshell - drawing is seeing . Some people may mistake their failure for an issue of hand-eye coordination, but the only hurdle is to trust our eyes and simply draw what we see. Otherwise, letting preconceptions get in the way, we will shift to draw what we think/know rather than what we see. Reciprocally, drawing also improves our seeing ability and sharpens our observation.
The experience of knowing how to see is very similar to knowing how to balance when we first learn to cycle. Both click in an instance. Surely, lots of practice can always help us overcome the hurdle far sooner. (Well, whatever we practice intensively, we can see significant progress.)
Besides speaking from personal experience, I came across more and more books sharing the same simple secret. You may like to check out some of them that are listed below: