1998

This was the first picture I drew, way back in 1998, having made the decision to try my hand at art. I was not happy. I was not happy at all. I was absolutely not happy at all. I walked out of the house and down to a local bookshop and was very fortunate enough to find the excellent book by Douglas R Graves entitled "Drawing a Likeness."

The reason this book caught my attention was the way it broke down the procedure necessary to draw a likeness into 45 steps, each step with an illustration. This seemed as close as was possible to having an art teacher standing beside me. The two pictures below are the second and third pictures that I drew - they are copies of one of the exercises in the Graves book, and I think they show how successful this book was at teaching me some of the techniques of drawing.

Interestingly, the key factor which improved my drawing was a short comment by the author underneath one of his gallery pictures - on page 26 - "This is a quick 45 minute sketch..." Until then I had expected a drawing to take maybe 15 minutes. When I learned that patience was one of the keys of drawing, my results improved enormously.

Finally happy with the results of my lessons I drew this next picture, a copy of an old family photo. It took an entire sunny afternoon to draw, lying on the bed where the sun was streaming in through the window.

It is amazing how one can improve over just a few days!

Over the next years I have bought 2 further books by Douglas R. Graves, "Figure Painting in Oil", and "Life Drawing in Charcoal," both excellent. In fact so far I have assembled a collection of 76 books. Many of them are good, not all of them are great, and that first purchase, "Drawing a Likeness" ranks as one of my most favourite.