Pencil drawing, probably the second thing that I found in
life that I actually had a knack for started for me pretty early in life. I found that I had a fair handle on the hand
eye coordination game. Drawing for
school work came pretty naturally to me.
When I was in fourth grade, one of my friends who had just moved
recently to the school showed me something that changed my whole
perspective. Sketching. He showed me how to draw without pressing
hard and making hard lines. Within a few
days I was sketching everything I possibly could and within a week or two I
discovered that regular pencils weren’t even something that I was interested in
drawing with because I couldn’t achieve the level of control that I
desired. I soon found that mechanical
pencils would give me so much more ability to capture detail and soon I found
that there were different sizes of lead for mechanical pencils and by middle
school I even found that there were .03 MM lead pencils which suited me just
fine.
I began developing a love for drawing animals and about the
same time began developing a dislike for art classes. By the time I was in high school I had
developed a serious distaste for art classes, and I only took two at the strong
urging of my art teachers and several other teachers. I had no desire to work with other mediums at
the time. I was not interested in color,
I was not interested in three-dimensional works, and I was not interested in
any sort of paints especially. The main lesson I took from all my art classes was that in order to ultimately be successful and keep from infringing copyrights I should begin shooting my own photographs, which later became something I relished greatly and still do. I got to a point I enjoyed that more than actually creating the artwork itself. I also have quite a few photos that I can work from and intend to capture more in the future.
I once worked on a pencil drawing of a turkey that took me a
span of nearly 4 years to complete. I
packed as much detail into it as possible and I poured my focus, attention and
my best work into it. Since then I
really have not put that much into any pencil drawing, mainly I suppose because
it taught me quite a lot about the way people think. People ultimately like color much more so
than black and white.
I drew so many pencil works for so many girlfriends in the
past and they are no doubt all lost forever.
I drew designs for t-shirts for clubs and drew many other pieces for
other causes and other folks. I drew a
design for a website I used to have and even found it as a tattoo on a guy in
Lincoln county when I worked there.
Completely random, I saw the bottom of the tattoo coming below his
sleeve on his bicep and asked him what it was.
He said he had picked the design at random off the internet and was
completely at a loss for what to say when I showed him that it was in fact my
website. That told me that there are
most likely countless others through the nation and possibly the world who
share the same tattoo. Thus is life I
suppose and I should leave things at that before I climb onto a rant.
Growing
Since then I have discovered that I do enjoy working with
color, mainly colored pencils although I have dabbled into watercolors quite to
my own satisfaction, and with my work I tend to be hands down, my harshest
critique. I had to develop my own system
for my colored pencil work and it means I keep hundreds of colored pencils on
hand in a small shelf system, all of which are kept as sharp as possible and as
many of each color as I can. As soon as
one loses its edge I pick up another continue. All in all though, pencil drawing was my first real latch onto the artistic world, and I do still enjoy from time to time creating something that I can stand back and look at. God created such beauty in the animals and fish in this world that it has always inspired me to try and recreate it as closely as possible. I can only do renditions and nothing close to his handiwork, but I hope that in some way he is pleased.
Exodus 35:35
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