The Lowly Pencil

It’s amazing the stuff you find when you clean house! This is a drawing I did of one of my cats back around 1984. And no, it wasn’t projected and traced (as is often done these days). I worked from a photo I’d taken, as cats aren’t too cooperative about holding a pose. Back then I hadn’t started painting yet. Couldn’t afford it. I was laid off my job, living hand-to-mouth in a crappy trailer park. Somebody had loaned me a copy of Betty Edwards’ book, “Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain”. I never gave it back. Pencils were cheap but I could only afford a couple at a time. I did all the exercises in the book and by the time I finished, I was amazed. I could draw!

It didn’t take long, though, to learn that pencil drawings were basically worthless. So I decided to take the leap and learn to paint. Luckily, I’d been called back to my job at Ford Motor Company’s Wixom Assembly Plant by then. It paid well enough so I could afford to fly out to Scottsdale Artists School and study with some of the best painters. And that’s the thing — try to study with the best people. Find somebody who paints the way you want to paint — and take a workshop! Don’t waste your precious time with idiots. Life is too short!