Stop Drawing Well, Start Drawing Honestly

Why your drawings don’t need to be perfect—they need to be yours.

Your drawing will improve when you stop trying to draw well and start trying to draw what matters to you. — Lynda Barry author of What It Is

Lynda Barry is a cartoonist, writer, and teacher whose work is messy, emotional, funny, and profoundly human. She explores how memory, personal experience, and drawing are connected—not to show off skill, but to remember, feel, and be alive.

For Barry, drawing isn’t about proving how good you are. It’s about paying attention to what hurts, what sticks, and what won’t leave you alone. That’s where real drawing lives.

We often overemphasize technique and the idea of drawing “correctly.” And while there are reasons for that, they’re not always good ones. I’ve taught beginning drawing at the university level for years, and I’ve seen how easily technical skill becomes the end goal rather than a means of expression. Foundational classes are often structured around measurable outcomes—line quality, proportion, value control—because those are easier to teach, easier to grade, easier to defend. Many instructors (myself included) were trained to pass down these priorities. But this creates a narrow framework that rewards precision over meaning and performance over voice. Layer on the weight of the Western art tradition and the unspoken pressure to emulate the “masters,” and it’s no wonder students learn to draw to please, not to say something.

I know this firsthand. In art school, traditional figure drawing was treated as the bedrock of visual training. And yes, it sharpened my eye and taught me the language of form—but I became obsessed. I took figure drawing nearly every semester—at least ten times over six years. That fixation spilled over into painting, printmaking, everything. Looking back, I wonder how much of that was genuine growth and how much was just me trying to prove I was “good enough” by academic standards.

Some of my classmates seemed to figure this out earlier. They weren’t fixated on getting things “right.” Their drawings were raw, sometimes rough—primitive even, by academic standards—but they meant something. They weren’t trying to impress; they were trying to speak. I was jealous of that freedom. They drew with confidence because they weren’t trying to prove anything.

It took me years to realize that expressive courage matters more than technical mastery. You can spend a lifetime learning to draw “correctly,” but it takes guts to draw something true.

Start with what matters to you. Your drawings will have something that can’t be taught: a pulse. You don’t need permission—just a pencil.

Because it’s not just about what you draw. It’s about how you approach drawing. Not as a performance. Not as a test of skill. But as a way of paying attention. Of processing. Of telling the truth. Like the best folk or outsider art, the power lies not in polish, but in presence.

If you’re trying to reconnect with your voice, here are three things to try:

Draw from memory, not reference. Choose something that lingers in your mind—a face, a place, a moment. Forget accuracy. Trust the version your memory has held onto.

Draw to process, not perform. Use your sketchbook like a journal. Draw when you're anxious, excited, confused. Let the drawing carry the emotion, even if it’s messy or strange.

Draw what you actually care about. Not what looks impressive. Not what gets likes. Something personal. Something that bugs you. Or delights you. Or won’t leave you alone.

You don’t need to be “good” to be honest. You just need to start.

So what’s the drawing you’ve been afraid to make?