Drawing – our new hobby!

Our plans to attend the San Diego Comic Con later this summer have unexpectedly mushroomed into something new! First, I tried to catch up on the comics world a little bit. Then I read, and LOVED, my first graphic novel, Digger. I became enthralled by the idea of telling stories mainly in pictures, using but a few well-chosen words. This lead to my next read, Making Comics, by Scott McCloud. That was enlightening! It was great fun learning more about the technical and the artistic processes behind what appear to be simple comics. But the joy of learning this was balanced by the painful awareness that I suck at drawing and painting! I still remember my few efforts at this as a child, and I never received any formal education in this area. My art teachers and art projects in school never really explored drawing and painting at the basic instructional level. Yet I believe I do have an artistic eye, which I practice mainly through photography. This blog itself has seen many creative moments. So I thought I’d press on with this new interest. I found a little computer program called Comic Life. It allows me to import a photograph and to then apply filters that make it look like the picture was drawn or painted in various styles. The program also has easy ways to add captions, word and thought balloons, and special effects. It also has a wide variety of pre-made layouts, making the final product look like a comic book page. My first few efforts with this have been fun and turned out fairly well. I will for sure continue to use Comic Life!

But I was not satisfied with that. I thought my own drawings would be better than filtered photos, even if they were my own photos. So I began to explore the idea of learning how to draw at my late age. I was surprised to consistently read that ANYONE can learn to draw, that I was wrong thinking only those rare individuals with inborn talent had that special gift. I did a search for the best instructional books on the subject and came up with a list of my top five. Then Gail did the same, and we finally decided to use Drawing for the Absolute and Utter Beginner by Claire Watson Garcia. Gail did have some art background as a child and had talked on and off about taking some art classes. So doing this together has been a particularly fun and satisfying thing!

The day came when we drove to Michaels to buy all sorts of art supplies! That was a really fun date! Seriously! It felt like one of those turning point moments where life can take you in one direction or another. We were about to start a new hobby! The spark of interest had ignited into a flame of action! We bought the recommended pencils, drawing papers, erasers, etc. We took that first step that turns a thought into a reality! 🙂

Well, by now we have gone through much of the book. We started by simply drawing observed lines. We practiced drawing simple shapes like circles and ovals, then piecing them together into more complex shapes. We learned to notice lines and basic shapes in what we see in the world. We learned a few techniques about drawing what we see with accuracy. We are currently learning shading techniques. I am now starting to see things in my 3D life while imagining how I would draw them in 2D.

Drawing is so far much more fun than I ever imagined it would be, and we are only a few weeks into it! I think it’s because I can already see the fruits of my labor and I can already see progress. I believe what they said is true. If I can draw, ANYONE can draw! 😀