Sorry I missed yesterday, folks. The router at our house cratered and I couldn’t get on the Internet.
Went out to lunch with friends today and the conversation turned to artistic endeavors. My wife has been a professional photographer and speed draws women faces. Our other two lunch companions have worked in theater and done lots of art projects in their lives.
One of them turned to me and asked “Do you have any artistic talents?”
“No,” I said. “I always wanted to be a cartoonist but I’ve never devoted the time and effort to learning.”
“You just need to doodle,” my friend said. She then proceeded to tear the paper rings off the napkins and handed one to me. “Draw something.”
I did say recently that I’m tried of waiting to do the things I’ve always wanted to do but haven’t done yet. So I pulled out a pen and drew a cartoon rocket. Not great but recognizable.
“That’s nice. Do another one.” She passed another paper napkin ring to me.
This time I drew a banner, waving in the air, with a kind of hatched pattern on it.
“Do another one.”
The third piece of paper ended up having a train locomotive chugging along with black smoke pouring from the smokestack.
“Do another one.”
I did a cartoon face of a guy as my last one. I’ve had an idea for a cartoon I want to do set to Voice of The Beehive’s song Scary Kisses. This was my first attempt at drawing the guy face of one of the characters in my story. Didn’t come out the way I have it in my imagination but not bad for a first attempt.
None of the doodles were ‘great art’ but then again they are just quick one-off doodles. They aren’t meant to be great art. Each things is at least recognizable as the thing I was trying to draw.
I think one of my stumbling blocks in doing artwork is lack of confidence in my ability. I know there is much to learn about drawing. I’m not going to be Van Gogh, or Picasso. I’m not trying to be. I would like to be good enough that I can consistently draw a character and always have it look like the same character. That will only come about through practice.
I need to do more art. Going to have to make more room in my schedule to do it more often. As ‘Commander Mark’ Kistler used to say ‘Draw, draw, draw, practice twenty to thirty minutes a day.’
I’ll start working that in, maybe on lunch breaks.
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