Phantom Limbs

By James McMullan

Somewhere between the ages of 18 and 19, right around my freshman year of college, I stopped devoting time and energy to things that required practice in favor of things that came more naturally.  Activities that had previously been important to me -- dancing, acting, singing (in secret) and art -- were pushed aside for writing and debating, things that I thought would serve me well in a political career.

In one sense, it's a smart calculation.  I was not going to be a professional actress or a Broadway dancer.  So why not focus talents and time into pursuits that were likely to pay off in the future?

Now that I'm cresting my 30s, I have been actively longing for some of those more artistic pursuits that were so abruptly abandoned.

That's why I'm so excited about LINE BY LINE on NYT online.  James McMullan is an artist who is going to be teaching weekly drawing lessons through this column.

From the first installment, "Getting Back the Phantom Skill":

Drawing, for many people, is that phantom skill they remember having in elementary school, when they drew with great relish and abandon. Crayon and colored pencil drawings of fancy princesses poured out onto the sketchbooks of the girls, while planes and ships, usually aflame, battled it out in the boys’ drawings. Occasionally boys drew princesses and girls drew gunboats, but whatever the subject matter, this robust period of drawing tended to wither in most students’ lives and, by high school, drawing became the specialized province of those one or two art geeks who provided the cartoons for the yearbook and made the posters for the prom.

This is sort of embarrassing to admit, but I drew brides.  But also the 9 planets of the solar system, palm trees, detailed scientific drawings of grasshoppers and the human heart for science class, and characters from A Midsummer Night's Dream.

I'm going to try to spend some time with James McMullan each week.