The author says he finds drawing to be very difficult, and I hear a lot of folks say this. Someone who sits down at the piano occasionally would likely say that

The author says he finds drawing to be very difficult, and I hear a lot of folks say this. Someone who sits down at the piano occasionally would likely say that they find the instrument difficult, or that they're "no good at piano". The difference from my perspective is that culturally we tend to accept that most people can become reasonably proficient at the piano with practice (even without innate musical ability). Playing the piano is a mechanical process. You hit the right notes at the right times, and it works. The same people that accept the piano as something learnable often think drawing is something you have to be innately good at, and I don't think this is true at all. Almost everyone has the necessary muscle control (if you're using the right parts of your hand/arm). If that weren't the case, people would not be good at tracing over images and rendering them true to the original. Once you accept that fact, the other primary requirement is building up objects from primitives. You can render a human standing in almost any posture just using ovals, rectangles, trapezoids, etc. The point I'm trying to make is that drawing is a learned skill, and almost anyone can draw whatever they want if they practice properly and consistently (focus on drawing ONE thing well before you move on to the next). It's not magical, and it doesn't require some innate talent to reach an acceptable level of competency. That said, there is a huge divide between "masters" and mere mortals, but the same could be said about programming, music, or any other discipline.