Drawing & the power of symbols

Let’s get right to it: I can’t draw…

Thanks for the short article

Wait wait, I still have some things to say.

Are you going to do another path down memory lane telling stories about how bad you draw or something?

You don’t like those stories?

Can you do it in bullet points?

Geez, all right…

I couldn’t recognize different styles of artists.
Not visual at all, as in: I knew the name of about 3 or 4 colors.
Nobody ever would guess my drawings at pictionary.
Failed all drawing classes.
Elephants draw better than me (check youtube).

They train those elephants to do those strokes. They don’t know what they’re drawing.

Exactly! Elephants don’t know what they’re drawing and they still draw better than I do.

Oh, come on, don’t beat yourself up. I’m sure something happened that changed all that?

Well yes and no what happened was the following: I got the chance to do a workshop on visual storytelling. Here is a pity attempt using ms paint to show how I see visual storytelling.

I still can’t draw right? Especially with a mousepad on a laptop. Yet I hope that by this picture, you have an idea of how I see visual storytelling.

Weird lines in a document to… Pictures having a loving relationship with words?

Fair enough, it’s not very clear. But this says more about my lack of visual vocabulary. Let me explain. In this training, we learned some visual vocabulary. Those are symbols that are very easy to draw by anybody. If you look at the drawing I made, the document would be one, a kind of square with one corner that is crooked (By a non visible, and a visible triangle). Another visual word would be the squiggly line in this document. The arrow. The hearts and of course lastly but not leastly, letters and symbols that make up words.

So kind of like ingredients you can use and make you own thing with it?

Exactly! I made this picture in about 20 seconds in paint. I wanted to explain how I see visual storytelling. To tell a visual story, Take any type of information, a report, a story, a plan etc. And make drawings with words attached to them. Make images of what you’re sharing and use words to anchor the symbols.

Now that you explain it in words, the drawing makes sense… it wasn’t clear, dude.

I know, it’s a 20 sec. Paint drawing for this article and I wasn’t trying and I’m not a pro. I would improve it this way, using a winding arrow to indicate transformation or turning. I would actually use other symbols. I could also draw a document left and having it transform into a video. Or the document to comic. But as you can understand, the symbols or visual words you choose will have an influence on how the “reader” “reads” you picture.

Here I changed just one symbol. Yet in some way, the meaning changes. The thunder implies that the pictures destroy the words, the triangle implies they’re above, the star… Well I don’t know about the star has a quality of perfectness with the “&” symbol implying a perfect marriage (FOR ME!)

Interesting stuff… But what’s your point?

During this training and practicing afterwards, I realized something amazing. Think back to our drawing elephant, he/she doesn’t know what the drawing is supposed to represent. He/she just copies movements with a stick with paint on a piece of paper. We know because the elephant doesn’t draw any other drawings, only the pictures he/she has practiced in advance.

WHAT’S YOUR POINT?

Think about letters, remember how many years it took you as a kid to learn to read. What is reading? It is recognizing weird symbols next to each and having your brain associating and having a mental image. Think about it. Here’s an experiment: The blue camel sits in his cubicle, meditating on the impossibility of its own existence.What happened when reading this? Did you see the camel? Did you see it as blue? Did you see it in its cubicle? Did you see any other decor? Did you see it meditating? Did you-

WHAT IS YOUR POINT !?

I’m not sure I have any. I don’t have any answers, I have questions. Symbols are so ever present in our way of living that we don’t even think about them. The words we use, the drawings we make, the signs we give, the turning lights on your car, sorry. It might feel I’m just enumerating human society but each one of those things are symbols that we take for granted. Take a word like communism. It might mean a whole lot of different things for a whole lot of different people. If you’re a idealist student or if you’ve live in the soviet regime, this one word will mean totally different things.

Yeah that’s so fun when you put some communist student next to someone who’s lived in the Soviet Union, the conversations are so-

LET ME FINISH! Words are symbols for things happening in the world that we perceive through our sense organs. But words themselves are made up of others symbols called letters and letters, are just drawings. But words, even when spoken, remain symbols, don’t they? Symbols are a type of human social conventions. Symbols are the result of human interaction, not of the world. They have no basis in reality whatsoever. Symbols don’t have any substance and some religions even ban symbolism or drawing or writing of certain people, things or ideas. They ban those using what kind of tools? Symbols either in a book or through spoken words. If I paste the letters c-a-m-e-l will not make a camel appear in front of you, but it will in your mind. If I write in dutch using the same letters, I would write k-a-m-e-e-l. Yet I’m sure that the symbols will be completely different in mandarin.

Dude calm down… and why does it matter?

Because communication can be very difficult. This was one of the reasons I started my podcast. I couldn’t understand how in my friends, some people voted for the far right and others voted for the far left and that I was the only who understands every one of them. Ponder the next symbols. “Yes we can” or “Work sets you free” or “Love is all”. In a lot of ways, I can easily argue that the blue camel sitting in his cubicle meditating on the impossibility of its existence is a lot clearer about its meaning than those sentences. What do those sentences mean concretely and what were they used for and how were they used.

I’m lost… and I’m pretty sure it’s your fault.

OK OK, check this out. Symbols are very powerful. They are the representation of something real. One symbol can represent a lot of different things depending on who, what, why, when or how someone made an association with it. I believe that an error happens WAAAAAAAAAYY too much in humanity is mistaking the symbol for reality. And my point is-

GOD! FINALLY!

My point is…hmmm… I lost it. Oh well. It will come back, I’m sure it had something to do with drawing and disconnecting reality from symbols and living in reality instead of a world of symbols. But anyway, can symbols really convey reality?

Is it the moment you propose action points?

Yes, yes, thanks for reminding me.

Pick up a book on visual tools and learn to draw them efficiently.
I take notes visually now, it’s more enjoyable to read and summarize. So Start taking notes visually.
Think about symbols and their power.
Think about all the times when something looked great (representation) but ended being bad or inversely when something looked bad (representation) but ended being great.
Think about the image of reality versus reality.
Think about on what you call reality and ask yourself if it is real or just your representation of reality.
Join a vipassana retreat and learn to perceive reality as it is.