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I still have drawings for children’s stories that I created twenty-eight years ago – expecting to someday get around to looking them over again to find ways to develop them. One of the greatest problems I have had as an artist was running out of my watercolors box of paint when I was five or six years old. I have this technique of illustrating my children’s books, never throwing away a drawing – always working to make it work. For some reason I thought developing that skill would make me an artist. Maybe there was a paper shortage somewhere in my past – I don’t know. Deep in my heart once upon a time a long long time ago there lodged an idea that I would like to make myself an artist. So I labour over my drawings – in my mind – and on paper. When I am not sure if I like a drawing or not I keep at it regardless, always working to develop it into something that I like. I believe that if I am a true artist then I will always be able to accomplish the task of developing my work into something that I can be satisfied that I like. Interestingly, I am trying to please myself because I am the artist. I am not necessarily my toughest critic, but I am the one who most matters to me because I am the artist. That is one of the reasons I love being an artist. Being able to write about being an artist has taken me years of study and turned my life around because writing has enabled me to recognize myself as an artist. The silly part about identifying myself is, whenI began writing and illustrating children’s books I hoped to become known as a writer yet children always without exception commented enthusiastically about the illustrations. To my disappointment, children thought of me as an artist and not as a writer. All the while I longed to become known as a writer, not endeavoring to develop myself as an artist because that accomplishment would be far too difficult for me – so I thought. However, remember, deep down in my heart I knew that if I could ever wish to become anything, it would most certainly be an artist. Why did I bury that desire so deep in my heart? I continued to learn how to write, I wrote and wrote and wrote until I could not write any more, and then I felt like doing nothing else but to draw. Carefully, because I did not want to run out of paper, I drew illustrations of the words I had written. I added to my drawings carefully and used them to illustrate my stories for children. Always without exception children enjoyed seeing my illustrations. Maybe children like what they see because my drawings are from my heart, a place that I love from.
I have a rule, I never throw away a drawing. Come to think of it I have thrown away a small mountain of papers I have written. I am not sure why that is the case, although I must have some degree of value placed upon my art – in my own mind. Or perhaps I simply know that someday I may still place another mark upon a drawing to make it better. Adrian’s Mayflower Adventure is a perfect example of saving my drawings to turn them into illustrations. Many sketches of the ship as it maneuvered across the Atlantic Ocean were envisioned through a glimpse within my mind of various views and distances that could occur if watching for a ship to pass by. I drew those sketches as fast as I could so as to catch them before I forgot the thought. Later on, each individual scribbled sketch was analyzed to see what exactly it was, and I began to see the idea of the ship being viewed from many perspectives. One such view, that of the rear of the ship, I may have overlooked as being what it was unless I studied it and began drawing more on the perticular page to develop it further. A few more lines and a few more colors and oh yes it certainly began to take shape – yes, it is the rear view of the ship. Think about it, have you ever seen a young child drawing. Has a young child ever completed a masterpiece and then shown it to you? Have you ever looked at a young child’s masterpiece and not known what-the- heck you were looking at, yet had the child tell you in explicit detail what it was that they drew especially for you. The curious mind will always wonder about this. I may have discovered something from within myself as an artist when I began to take a more serious look at the drawings I was attempting which at first appeared to be not much more than incoherent lines on a page. I used all of the drawings I sketched of the Mayflower and they are more beautiful than I ever imagined at first. Like the story itself which is told from a brand new perspective, the drawings illustrate the advantage of seeing objectively from various perspectives.Anza Books
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