[brimble]

> You think you can see things, but what you are really doing is recognizing things. Any normal adult has the motor skills to make a controlled mark.

I have reasonably nimble fingers and at least average overall motor control, and really cannot do this. I got pretty good at drawing a handful of things as a kid by just repeating the same pattern every time, but even on those my lines were just awful. I'm sure I could get better at it with tons of drilling (and probably just starting over from scratch, technique-wise—I expect I'd have to totally re-train the way I do the entire activity, to fix whatever's wrong) but a little drawing here and there with lots of attention to trying to fix that has done nothing. I cannot make a remotely straight line of any length at all (an inch would be pushing my abilities, and I'd probably fail like half the time). Circles are right out. I have a good enough eye for perspective that I can make useful and recognizable sketches for e.g. home projects, but they look like a 2-year-old drew them because the lines are so bad.

Step 1 for me absolutely would be learning how to make marks that are anywhere near my intention.

[NumberWangMan]

If you're interested in investing time into improving (it's hard to tell based on your comment alone) it sounds like https://drawabox.com/ (it's free) starts with just what you're asking for -- how to make straight lines on a page. A big part of the first lesson is practicing how to make confident, accurate strokes using your whole arm.

[brimble]

Cool, thanks. Yeah, I'm pretty sure there's something fundamentally incorrect about how I draw, even though it feels fine (but the results are terrible).

[vajrabum]

I'll second the recommendation of drawabox. That site helped my drawing a lot.

[Benjamin_Dobell]

If you're anything like me, I think it's a matter of visualisation, not coordination. I tend to shake if I try hold my hand still (and always have), my hand-writing is downright awful. My sketches / drawings are terrible - I dislike visual brainstorming sessions quite a bit!

However, I did start going through Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain a while back and seriously impressed myself by following the exercises. No, I can't draw a circle or a straight line, but those things don't exist in nature; especially when you factor in perspective.

When in the right mind-set I found I wasn't thinking about shapes at all, I was just trying to make something look the way I was visualising it. For me that's the hard part. I normally think analytically "A stop sign is a octagon with some straight lines. Stop lights are circles." That's simply not true when you're trying to draw. Which is just as well, because I can't draw those shapes for squat!

I don't think I'll ever be able to draw diagrams/charts. However, I'm sure if I kept practising I could get reasonably good at drawing people & objects. Even in a cartoon style, I think I could, with a lot of effort, improve to an acceptable standard. Even cartoons tend to have some sort of perspective and characters are not symmetrical.

[aklemm]

This is EXACTLY my experience. I took an adult learning class at a community art center and it almost literally opened my eyes. On day one, we were to draw an egg and mine looked awful. The instructor said I draw like a child, which really stung but it was true and he was being literal, not cruel.

I was stuck there my whole life, but this class taught me to stop using lines and “sketch light” (shading instead of line drawings) and use the whole arm with elbow up off the table for those circles and lines.

Draw a Box will help you, and pay a mentor if needed too.