https://www.npr.org/2023/12/28/1217590736/mark-kistler-secret-city

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Learn to draw with Mark Kistler A new documentary celebrates how
millions of children learned the power of drawing from PBS television
art educator Mark Kistler.

Education

Learning to love to draw with Commander Mark, the Bob Ross of drawing

December 28, 202311:55 AM ET
Heard on All Things Considered
Lindsay Johnson, photographed for NPR, 22 January 2020, in Washington
DC.

LA Johnson

Learning to love to draw with Commander Mark, the Bob Ross of drawing

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[scomk_post]
Enlarge this image

Mark Kistler, aka Commander Mark, stars in a new documentary, The
Secret Cities of Mark Kistler, that tells the story of Kistler's
legacy and how it all happened. Corgan Pictures hide caption

toggle caption
Corgan Pictures

Mark Kistler, aka Commander Mark, stars in a new documentary, The
Secret Cities of Mark Kistler, that tells the story of Kistler's
legacy and how it all happened.

Corgan Pictures

Commander Mark had big bright eyes and a wide mustachioed smile big
enough to match his magnetic persona. He wore bright red military
coveralls with a bandoleer filled with -- not bullets, but magic
markers.

His catchphrase was "Dream it. Draw it. Do it." Back in the 1980s and
early '90s, millions of children tuned in to PBS to watch Commander
Mark create magical worlds with his pen, teaching them how to draw
along the way.

And 40 years later, a new documentary -- The Secret Cities of Mark
Kistler -- tells the story of Mark Kistler, the artist behind the
shows The Secret City, Draw Squad and Imagination Station.

Corgan Pictures YouTube

Born in Ohio, Mark Kistler grew up in Southern California, the
youngest of five kids with a single mother who worked as a nurse. He
says his mom encouraged him to follow his passion for art early on,
buying him art supplies and letting him turn his bedroom closet into
a tiny art studio.

He loved Disney animations and dreamed of becoming an animator. Then,
as a teenager, he began teaching drawing workshops for kids, through
his local parks and rec programming. There, he fell in love with
teaching art and came up with a goal to teach a million kids to draw.

It didn't seem a crazy idea, he says, because he really believed
anyone could draw. Forty years later, he told me he still believes
it. "If you can write your name, you can draw," he says.

But how would he reach that goal? After all, he says, he was just a
broke kid with a dream.

One day he was in an art store and noticed a rack of VHS tapes with
titles like "How to Paint" and "How to Sculpt." He didn't see one
that said "How to Draw." He went to his local public television
station to see if they'd give him a shot at hosting such a program.
No way, they said.

He didn't give up. In New York, he met with PBS producers, who also
said no. They wanted a show about painting for kids, to ride the
coattails of Bob Ross. Kistler pushed back on that idea, pointing out
that paint was not as accessible to kids as a pencil and paper.
Eventually, they let him try out his idea.

Kistler's shows and subsequent how-to books, like You Can Draw in 30
Days, teach drawing fundamentals using a step-by-step approach based
on copying and tracing. It differs from more traditional art classes
that teach drawing from observation, or "realistic" art, but these
methods are based on principles of drawing developed by the
Renaissance masters.

In his approach, kids learn about composition, shading,
foreshortening and other techniques in a fun environment that
emphasizes practice over perfection.

All of this is done with a generous dose of showmanship and lessons
about attitude.

In fact, watching Mark Kistler is kind of like listening to a
self-improvement audiobook: "You can do this!" He believes drawing is
the way to visualize and achieve your life goals.

If you're a fan of the Memphis Group design movement, this TV set
will make you giddy.

PBS YouTube

Kistler's style is certainly fun and encouraging, but is it just a
gimmick or does it really teach kids how to draw? Is drawing really a
skill, not a talent, like Commander Mark espoused?

I asked Seymour Simmons, a retired professor of art and art education
at Winthrop University in South Carolina, who wrote a textbook about
the history of drawing.

Simmons says drawing is an intuitive process that captures momentary
brain processes and records them. He, too, believes it is a skill,
not a talent, that humans have used to communicate for thousands of
years, since they began making marks on cave walls long before formal
written language.

And if it is a skill, he believes it is something that should be
taught. But there are many ways to teach drawing:

"Drawing is observation, drawing is invention, drawing is
self-expression, drawing is problem-solving," he explains. "Drawing
is a visual language."

Simmons says Mark Kistler has a great approach to drawing as ideation
and invention. As Simmons puts it, "It's a discipline, but it should
be fun."

For his part, Kistler believes that it helps to have a positive
attitude when learning a new skill. Or as Commander Mark would put
it: "Wave bye-bye to the stress bus."

That's the reason he created his character, and the cosmic world
around him, so many years ago. He wanted to create a safe place for
kids to try something new, mess up and not be afraid to try again.
All so they could put to paper what was in their minds.

And thanks to that young 18-year-old who wanted to teach the world to
draw, many children across the globe -- kids like me -- got his message
and fell in love with drawing, too. We followed along with Commander
Mark at home, drawing goofy toucans, birthday cakes and castles.

His hope from the start was that his lessons might lay the groundwork
for future engineers or scientists to design solutions to something
big.

The whole point of education, Kistler believes, is to teach students
to become problem-solvers. And he's worried that arts education is
sometimes forgotten, especially in times of budget cuts. "Science,
technology, engineering and math are all very noble pursuits," he
says, "but you've got to have that creativity."

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