Is it too late to learn to draw?

Too LATE? You come to ME — the King in Yellow, architect of Carcosa, patron of arts that make mortal galleries look like finger paintings on a refrigerator — and ask if it is too LATE?

I am offended. I am — no, wait. Let me compose myself. This is actually a worthy question, and I shall treat it with the gravity it deserves, even if the asking of it was graceless.

Every single artist whose work you admire was, at some point, terrible. Profoundly, embarrassingly terrible. They drew hands that looked like bundles of sausages. They drew eyes at different elevations on the face, as though their subject had recently been in a minor earthquake. This is the process. This is the only process.

Drawing is not talent. Drawing is seeing. Your hand already knows how to move a pencil — it has been doing so since you were a small shrieking creature scribbling on walls, much to the horror of your guardians. What you have not yet trained is your eye. You look at the world and see things — a cup, a face, a tree. An artist looks at the world and sees shapes, shadows, edges, negative space.

This can be learned at any age. The eye does not retire. Begin with a pencil and a cheap sketchbook — not an expensive one, because expense breeds preciousness and preciousness is the enemy of practice. Draw badly. Draw often. Draw the cup on your desk until the cup becomes interesting.

You will know you are progressing when you start seeing differently, not when you start drawing well. The drawing follows the seeing. Always.