I’m in my early 50s, and for all the time I’ve been alive and able to hold a writing instrument, I’ve believed I was bad at visual art. I always wished I could draw, especially when I got to high school and some of my classmates were talented artists. I’d try to draw the occasional cartoon and I was always unhappy with the results.
In later years, I became more serious about poetry, I had a couple poet friends who were also visual artists, and I was envious of the way their notebooks contained both their poems and their images.
I recently started using pencils again to write, and the other night I was on the couch and decided to try to sketch the stereo, which is helpfully rectangular.
I thought it was pretty poor, but Stephanie liked it. So did a few other people who saw it. This gave me a bit of confidence.
At work I grabbed some printer paper and a piece of card stock and made my own sketchbook:
I made another sketch of the stereo. Then I tried to sketch my less rectangular car, Marshmallow:
The proportions are clearly wrong but I still like it. This evening I tried a third sketch:
I did a bit of shading because I’m hella fancy.
And look, I’m no great artist or anything, but I quite literally spent 45+ years believing I didn’t know how to draw at all. I feel like I’ve unlocked a latent mutant ability. It’s exciting!
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