Lots of people claim they just can’t draw and seem to believe you’re either born with the ability or you’re not. I think of drawing – or sketching which is what I like to do – as really just another muscle that we can either choose to exercise or not. I love to do quick sketches with pen and what I love about them is this – even a bad or mediocre one is so much better than no sketch at all. Like the one above that I sketched with a too-fine-tipped pen by the glow of Christmas tree lights. That bear was a gift for Samantha from the giver’s personal collection. I wanted to give a piece of him back in Samantha’s thank you note, so I made a sketch and shrunk and copied it on cardstock at the copy shop. Have you ever come across a piece of handwriting from a departed love one and had the feeling that it brought them right back to you? I think drawing or sketching is like that too. Like a piece of your soul gets transferred to the page every time you put pen to paper.
I found this book, One Sketch a Day, A Visual Journal at Paper Source before Christmas and I bought it as a gift for myself. I am always thinking I should sketch more and exercise that muscle. Maybe this will help me do it.
If you’re interested in learning to draw or in improving your skills, I recommend the books by Robert Regis Dvorak. I like The Magic of Drawing a lot. I’ve taken a couple of classes with Mr. Dvorak and they were very worthwhile. You can see his books by clicking here. His links to individual books don’t seem to be working, but just scroll down the page and you’ll see them all anyway.
A very Happy New Year to you and yours.
What a great idea! And yes, what you wrote about finding an old handwritten note taking you right back to that person…so true. xo
We don’t write hand written notes like we used to…. Perhaps I should go back to that for those that I really care about:) Thanks for the thought.