I have a bit of a weird relationship with the arts.
I appreciate the beauty of a wide variety of music, architecture, literature and such. I married a woman with a degree in music whose major instrument throughout her degree was voice, but who is also an accomplished pianist and can play a guitar, a little. [Is that like saying ‘I have a friend who is _____!’?]
I also appreciate design and the power of images. My wife, however, the aforementioned artist, does not understand why I think comic sans is a font for kids and why I react with snobbish disdain when an adult uses comic sans in typed communication to other adults. Last May at our annual OLFM Workshop, I invited Lisa Thiessen to come and graphically record the sessions.
As you can see, she is good.
So, what of my fine motor skills? Well…not so much. I have had difficulty drawing stick figures all my life, my handwriting is horrific. Pretty much every artistic endeavour I undertake ends up looking like this (with bonus points for comic sans).
Or does it…
Here is something I drew when I was living in Japan.
Yesterday, I was in a meeting and we were thinking through the structure of a webpage for the faculty development course I’ve created and I suggested that we could have a landing page in WordPress to which participants are directed after registration. I managed to draw an outline of the setup on the whiteboard, and then it became clear that the landing page was redundant, so I drew a black ‘X’ through it. As conversation continued, we realized that the landing page needed to be replaced by a person…so I drew a circle.
Drawing Skillz
I’m pretty sure the designers in the room recognized the brilliance of what had just (accidentally) happened.
Then last night I was inspired to summarize my day in one word and to make it fancy. I downloaded the free Paper app by FiftyThree and got to play on my iPad. My WotD was determined to be DWaB (Dude With a Beard). After just a few tests and getting used to the interface, I got the word onto the paper and started in on making it fancy with Nancy’s five shapes. Triangles and squares are pretty easy, circles a little harder, but spirals are surely the spawn of Satan himself.
Here is what I ended up with.
Apparently my ability to accidentally draw people with letters and circles is a bit of a superpower.