I Can't Draw

"You don't draw", my weekend boss said to me, as we worked on his latest project.

The latest project is a purely geometric aluminum sculpture destined for Key West at the end of November. The fabrication of this sculpture is more about cabinet making and proper joint fitting and exactitude rather than a wild and effusive creative orgy. More teeth cleaning than gun slinging. As a result, he is having a terrible time of it. He draws out multiple plans of 2D projections for the strange compound angles that occur when joining two parallelograms and a trapezoid at sixty degree angles.

"I don't" I replied. "I probably should, but I see what we need to do in my head in 3D, and so I don't need to draw. I can rotate it around and look at it in my head, and I know what we need to do without drawing it".

"I know", he says, and it pisses him off.

I really should draw more often though. Back in the late 80s, I gave up on skiing. No one particular reason, I just no longer did it. I used to water and snow ski. I think the last time I water skied (slalom) was 1987. And snow skiing (not quite black diamond advanced skiing - but I was always a natural at it), would have been 1992 I'm thinking. I have no doubt that I would be an embarrassment on the slopes now, and probably would not be able to get up out of the water on a slalom ski.

And so it is with drawing. I took some drawing course at local community colleges up until about 1996. The work was passable, certainly not photo-realistic, but fairly accurately renderings, and with my own particular flair.

Now, my drawing skills have degenerated to a sixth-grade level. Sixth? Perhaps third.

Now, I know it's all practice and patience. I suppose I should start drawing again.

I used to do quite a bit of cartooning. I pretty much stopped about the same I stopped skiing. I came across some cartoons in a notebook I found in my closet. If I can remember, I'll snap digital photos of them and show them to you.

So, I decided to try to cartoon that Saturday night. The result was like something out of kindergarten, and there was no way I could display it. So, I took that cartoon and spent a good twenty minutes redrawing it. Wow, I am really out of shape.