At the rate of one short endeavor a month, I wouldn’t expect to get much better at climbing, and so it isn’t much of a surprise to me that I haven’t improved much at drawing over the years. I don’t spend nearly as much time as I would like to on it, but it’s fun, and I’m trying to be braver about sharing the things I make with others, so here it is.
Art is supposed to be this wonderfully creative endeavor, but when I try to draw things from images in my head, they mostly turn out disproportionate or cartoony or both. I don’t mean cartoony in the good sense – like a comic strip or something – I mean it in the sense that it’s supposed to look real, but doesn’t. It’s just bad. So, the stuff that I have kept is mostly straight out of pictures in magazines or the like. It is not a failure of artistic vision, but a failure of artistic execution. I’ve come back around to the problem of not practicing enough.
In 2017 I bought a basic fountain pen and began exploring. I don’t do many sketches with it, but I liked how this one turned out.
I’m still solidly within the ‘learning to render’ phase of drawing. It’s fun to take an image and noodle around with it, though I prefer sketching to producing finished pieces. There are those within the art community that would call that something other than art. That’s OK with me. Whatever you call it, I have a good time with it.
Cuddling is my favorite. 
Sketching with a ball point pen. 
I liked the way the water turned out in this one. 
I was so pleased when a friend asked to have the original of this drawing as a gift for her mom. 
An illustration for the book Tom is putting together. Is the guy recognizable? 
I sprained my ankle during a backpacking trip. 
I love that chickarees dig up mushrooms and dry them for later high in the branches of trees. 
Just hanging in there in 2020.