Can you be an artist if you have no talent?

Yes. Yes. Well, ok, you might never be a household name. But does that mean you should never pick up a pencil? Our media-saturated society, with its cult of celebrity and the ready reproduction of art and music, has made culture a spectator sport. Where once everyone sang, danced and daubed pictures on walls, these pursuits have become the domain of the Expert. The rest of us watch, consuming their albums, their art, their performances like manufactured goods.

In his exploration of the difficulties of drawing in The Guardian, critic Jonathan Jones talks about Picasso, and somehow manages to compare his fledgeling efforts to the great master's. He suggests "that geniuses are born not made, and that no one really learns anything except what was already latent within them". If you're talking genius, perhaps there's an element of truth. But Picasso's father was an art professor, and his sons first word was 'piz', an attempt at the Spanish 'lapiz', meaning 'pencil'. What was that quote about 'give me a child until he is 5...."? Would he have been as great an artist if his father was an engineer?

Jones's piece ends "....I had been thinking about drawing yet recognising how incapable I would remain of doing justice to them. The sketchbook in my hand had become an object of shame; where was the nearest bin? All over the square, people cast shadows. No one noticed the death of an amateur artist."

How sad. He seemed to recognize the value of drawing - "precisely because it is difficult" - and had moments of pleasure and excitement in his attempts. But, even as a critic, who ought to understand what making art is about, he fell victim to the myth of Talent. Ok, so your copies of the Masters don't match up to theirs. Of course they don't. They are interpreting the world as they saw it. You don't see through their eyes, or draw with their hands. Go out and draw what you see. What does your vision of the world, and your expression of it, have to offer? Jonathan Jones, Picasso will never see and draw your daughter with a father's loving eyes. Only you can do that.

Read painting Guide Marion Boddy-Evans' thoughts on the article.