Which is easier to do: Writing or Drawing?

[TheYellowCellPhone]

As an amateur of both, they each require the same skills. Portrayal of an endpoint, details, familiarity, imagination, visualization, and being so pissed off at seeing the finished product as shit but you can't find a way to improve it, so you scrap it anyway.

 

[Playful Pony]

I doubt there is a constant here. As with anything really. Some people are good at drawing, some people write well. Some people are amazing at maths, some (me!) are plain awful at it. I very much enjoy both drawing and writing. I wouldn't say I'm much good at any of the two though... Measuring up against some of the amazing work I see other people out there do, I feel really quite terrible at it!

I still love doing it though, and thats what matters to me. I'm not planning on living off of it. My favorite thing in the world is to just relax somewhere and let my imagination run wild. My dreams can revolve around the same "plot" every night for weeks or months. Aparently all my other friends only dream completely random things, or things rarely related to something they dreamt before. I seem to have a whole story going on in my head X3. Makes me feel like I must be crazy at times!

 

[SirDeadly]

Writing is definitely easier for me. I can't draw to save my life... It's been a goal of mine to have a book published sometime before I die.

 

[Shock and Awe]

Neither, some people can write well while being shit at drawing(like me) and some are the opposite. Some can do neither. Some can do both. Person to person basis.

 

[Bat Vader]

I don't really think one is easier than the other. They are both difficult but in different ways and both take a good amount of time to master. I am practicing my both drawing and my writing at whatever chance I get.

 

[excalipoor]

I've drawn stuff I'm pretty happy with before. On the other hand, I hate everything I've ever written.

Here is an interesting point.
While I stand by the idea that writing is easier, nothing you produce will be of any merit until years and years of practice + refining of tastes. Drawing is purely aesthetic, but writing is a braintease, and requires a bit more out of it to gain favor.

As an example; I started writing in 6th grade when I was 11, and it was total shit I'd rather forget ever happened. By 16 it started showing a healthy "core", as in, a story people would likely care about at all. Now at 28, I feel my stuff would make Christopher Nolan and Satoshi Kon's ghost green with jealousy. I even go back to my waaaay earlier works and am able to single out what works, versus what is trite and/or amateur.

It's not like I lack experience. I've been writing for a decade now, and I can tell what works and what doesn't. Among the hurdles I can't seem to get over is originality. I take a lot of inspiration from works I've enjoyed myself. I build on that, put my own spin on it, but instead of creating something new, it always ends up looking like a crude imitation. I feel like I haven't written anything that's truly mine.

I think visual arts and writing are creative in very different ways. For an artist, how plays just as great (if not greater) a role as what. For a writer, overly dolled up language certainly doesn't turn a bad story into a good one, in the worst case it'll just get in the way. A "good" writer isn't very good at all if he has nothing to say.

 

[Techno Squidgy]

snip

It really all depends on how you best express yourself. For some writing will be much easier and they can weave a story out of ideas plucked from the ether. Others can take a look around them or even within themselves and lay down a visual masterpiece. There are musicians who can hear the sounds around them and translate that into music, as Hendrix did.

I'm not really good at any of those but am passable. I can write an okay story, on rare occasion can pull off some good artwork and sometimes while fooling around on my guitar I can lay down a sweet little chord progression, riff or lick.

 

[Kiefer13]

I wouldn't say that either is objectively more difficult, but personally I find writing much easier. I'd like to think that I'm a fairly decent writer (even if I lack the attention span and drive to carry a story until completion most of the time), while I really just can't draw worth a damn.

I suppose that what makes the difference for me is that I enjoy the actual process of writing, even if the particular piece I'm writing ends up in the recycle bin and never sees the light of day. Attempting to draw and leaving without any tangible results however just leaves me frustrated.

 

[Dr. wonderful]

Really?


It depends on the person of course. I'm more of a writer, but that doesn't mean I don't try to learn how to draw.

Some folks are shitty writers, but great artists and Vice versa

 

[GTwander]

I've drawn stuff I'm pretty happy with before. On the other hand, I hate everything I've ever written.

Here is an interesting point.
While I stand by the idea that writing is easier, nothing you produce will be of any merit until years and years of practice + refining of tastes. Drawing is purely aesthetic, but writing is a braintease, and requires a bit more out of it to gain favor.

As an example; I started writing in 6th grade when I was 11, and it was total shit I'd rather forget ever happened. By 16 it started showing a healthy "core", as in, a story people would likely care about at all. Now at 28, I feel my stuff would make Christopher Nolan and Satoshi Kon's ghost green with jealousy. I even go back to my waaaay earlier works and am able to single out what works, versus what is trite and/or amateur.

It's not like I lack experience. I've been writing for a decade now, and I can tell what works and what doesn't. Among the hurdles I can't seem to get over is originality. I take a lot of inspiration from works I've enjoyed myself. I build on that, put my own spin on it, but instead of creating something new, it always ends up looking like a crude imitation. I feel like I haven't written anything that's truly mine.

There has never been an original thought since the beginning of time, it's always been a basis of observation > imitation. Even the wheel bit the physics of an object rolling down a hill. All that is required is a spark of inspiration and the ability to spend time on it and make it flower.

I haven't had one of those moments in quite some time (mostly due to immediate life worries clouding my creative vision), but I can remember a handful of moments where a single image or thought evolved into something amazing, but similar to it's origination in the smallest sense. If nobody knew that moment is what got the ball rolling, they'd never make the connection.

An example would be a book I've been working the kinks out of since the moment I saw the intro to Persona 3 on IGN, long before it's release. I saw the image of kids putting a gun to their head and it just clicked. Eventually it turned into a tale that took notes from quite a few things; it revolves around the Aboriginal concept of 'the dreamtime', has daily resets of time and events similar to Groundhog Day, rules to that reset that are experimented with along the lines of how the killer notebook was in Death Note, and involves a group of high school delinquents (The Breakfast Club) that are constantly offing themselves in order to relive the day's events ad infinitum (the gun to head thing from P3). Had I not used any of those examples to help push the point across, it's highly unlikely anyone would come upon them on their own, and the plot strays greatly from any direct similarities beyond, perhaps, certain plot devices and other characteristics.

~but again, there is no such thing as original thought, as all those inspirations were in turn inspired by something else all together.

 

[Dense_Electric]

As someone who considers himself skilled at both, I'm going to have to say they can't really be compared. Both are easy enough to be decent at, but extremely difficult to master.

At first drawing seems the more difficult due to the immediately visible differences between a professional and an amateur. One can merely glance at a piece and know which is which.

But writing can be just as finicky - absolute novices (usually children) can be forgiven for their lack of experience, but people actually tend to get worse the more they do it. Amateur writers usually use way too many words (and usually exotic or uncommon words in the hope of sounding sophisticated, when in reality all they do is confuse the reader), passive tense instead of active tense, too many adverbs and other unnecessary descriptions. Truly great writers have to find a balance between colorful writing and simple writing. Something that paints the scene for the reader, but also moves the action forward without using too many words. I'm just getting there myself, and believe me, it's difficult.

 

[RatRace123]

Writing for me, drawing for other people.

And some are equally as awesome at both and some suck at both.

 

[Porygon-2000]

To be fair, I suck at both.

Doesn't mean I'm not open to suggestions on how to improve.

 

[prophecy2514]

For me writing both creatively and in a more serious and professional context is far easier than drawing. I gave up on trying to draw back in primary school, never got past the stick figures for people level.

Thats for me though, I have a friend who is incredibly talented at drawing, yet could never put together a coherent and fluent essay. Ask him and you'd get the opposite response - its all a matter of perspective.

 

[Shoggoth2588]

I think I'm better at writing than I am at drawing. I can do both fairly well and while most people would probably say I draw a lot better I've done more short stories that I remember off-hand and there are more that I'm proud to have written. I get more out of writing.

 

[Phlakes]

As someone who's done both since the beginning of time, writing. Writing is a lot more flexible. The threshold of "good" art is very unforgiving.

 

[Signa]

I suck at drawing. It doesn't take much to impress me with a drawn figure. I actually have written some pretty decent works in the past, when I had English projects give me the right inspiration. My my experience, I can wholeheartedly say that writing is the easier skill.

However, I think looking at this as objectively as possible, I'm going to saw drawing in the easier skill. Anything you want to draw will have a real-world equivalent for you to look at as an example. The skill of getting that onto paper might be a bit of a trick, but you can just keep looking and adjusting the technique. Now with writing, anyone can talk about a guy walking down the street, but it takes a master to describe the gloomy, oppressive rain that is soaking his jacket, and the joyous feelings of psychotic glee his dark figure is concealing. As a writer, you have to learn how to communicate with your audience, and that is something that can't be done with simple trial and error.

 

[Uzi-Bazooka]

As a maker of comics, I actually do both, and for me, writing has always been easier. Now, I think that for the most part, that's a personal thing - I've been writing for a long time, and coming up with stories isn't the problem so much as deciding which stories NOT to tell. Drawing, on the other hand, is something which I added more recently.

In a more general sense, though, I think that drawing is harder. Any fool can write "three guys sat on a bench". But when you're drawing, you have to design the outfits and unique character designs for the the three guys, and you have to make the bench big enough for them to sit on, and you have to draw everything in proportion, and you'll probably have to draw the bench in perspective, and if you're any good you'll add a background, so you have to decide: are they at the park? The beach? The inner city?

 

[PunkyMcGee]

they are both hard. but i play the drums. so my talents are completely unsuited of this discussion.

EDIT: honestly, drawing bad can be a "style". but spalling an grammer is hrad.

 

[ADDLibrarian]

I'm an ok writer. I suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck at drawing. Suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck. My dad was an artist. I did not inherit that particular gene.