“I can’t draw.” They’re the three words that prevent most people from making art, and the three words that the fourth annual Vancouver Draw Down refuses to accept.

“It’s our goal to get people to abandon that worn-out phrase,” explains Marie Lopes, Draw Down coordinator and arts programmer for the Vancouver Board of Parks and Recreation’s arts and culture department. “It becomes the invisible dividing line between the artist and the nonartist, and we’d like to just erase that phrase.”

This year, the Draw Down expands from 19 sites across the city to a whopping 36 community centres, galleries, and public spaces. All of the Saturday (June 15) events (see a schedule at the Vancouver Draw Down website) aim to break down barriers and expand everyday people’s ideas of what drawing is—and who’s allowed to do it. Many of the free public workshops are aimed at helping people let go of their inhibitions.

In some cases, that may mean sharing the workload and drawing collaboratively with others. At Thunderbird Community Centre (from 1 to 3 p.m.), participants create abstract watercolour swishes that others will turn into finished creatures. And at UBC Learning Exchange (612 Main Street from noon to 2 p.m.), participants pitch in to make an Art Garden mural, using natural “paints” like beet juice, turmeric paste, and coffee.

In other cases, artists will encourage visitors to experiment with materials: at False Creek Community Centre, with Raymond Boisjoly (1 to 4 p.m.), you can stick a Magic Marker, a crayon, and a piece of charcoal into Plasticine and figure out how you’re going to draw with that.

At the Slip/Spin: From Studio to Satellite Gallery show, artists show another unexpected medium’s use of mark-making: pottery.

“In fact, a lot of potters do draw,” reveals veteran pottery artist Martin Peters, who studied with famous English potter Bernard Leach. Leach, an artist from the 1920s to the early 1970s, was known for his line drawings and influenced the clay works on exhibit at the Satellite.

Peters explains many ceramicists first pick up a pencil to work out the lines and shapes they will throw on the wheel. “Beyond that, when the pot is being made and after the pot is made there’s an opportunity to draw on it.” An artist might take a wooden tool and draw lines on the pot, sometimes filling them with glaze. Or they might use the glazing process to “draw” designs.

Many of those sketches on paper and on clay will be on view at the morning’s Dunbar Pottery Studio Open House (10 a.m. to noon, 4056 West 27th Avenue). “My plan is to be making pots and my thought is that people will want to draw that process. If you’ve ever watched somebody throw a pot on a wheel, it’s a very dynamic process, in terms of quality of line and expression,” says Peters, who also works as a criminal lawyer in town. His colleague Ron Vallis will throw pots later in the day (2 to 4 p.m.) on a Leach-style kick wheel at the Satellite Gallery.

Lopes says such opportunities will expand people’s ideas of drawing—and hopefully push those of all ages to pick up a pencil or charcoal. “People assume that if you are having a free drawing workshop that it is for children,” she says. “Adults will timidly come up and ask if they can try. Parents have this expectation that they will stand there and watch.”

Keeners can pick up a passport and enter to win prizes for attending two or more events; the idea is to grab a friend and hit a few drawing jams in neighbourhood clusters around the downtown, Main Street, and elsewhere.

“One of the things I really like about Draw Down is people realize that drawing is a way to spend time together,” Lopes adds, “where you could sit and draw with your friends. There’s this clichéd notion of the artist as very solitary, working in the garret. But it’s social and a form of conversation.”