I've enjoyed following this blog for a while now and feel very honored to be a part of it. Thank you, Cathy, for the invitation!
I've been drawing pictures for as long as I can remember. While I'm working on a drawing or painting everything that's troubling me slips away and I live, for a time, in a perfect world. Consequently I had no choice but to figure out how to make a living drawing pictures! I've worked as an editorial illustrator for over twenty years, drawing pictures for magazines, newspapers, and books.
In 1996 I began to work digitally. Although I love drawing on the computer I found that I missed paper and pens and paint and all the mess and uncertainty that go along with that. I also found myself yearning to spend more time outdoors. Even though nature seemed to find it's way into many of my illustrations, I'd never really made the connection between going out and actually drawing in nature until I noticed some mushrooms one winter day in the woods. At first, I took photographs of all the mushrooms I found. Then I began to draw from the photographs, but it wasn't quite as satisfying as I'd hoped. That's when the light bulb went off in my head and I realized I could go outside and, well, draw the mushrooms right where they were! Or bring them home and draw them. Wow! What a revelation! I've been drawing outside or bringing some of the outside in to draw ever since. It's humbling and rather exciting to discover how 
much I didn't know about making pictures. I'm enjoying being a student again and looking forward to being one for a good long time!I walk every morning and I try to sketch something on every walk. I have just a few places I go to and am always amazed at how fresh and new they look, now that I make sketches of them. I'm rarely bored on a walk and find that the most ordinary things become exciting and exotic when I give them the attention needed to make even the quickest, simplest sketch. Each day is a new adventure, filled with discoveries and mysteries to solve.
Welcome, Debbie! I feel the same way - there's never a boring moment when outside and creating art chases all else away :) I look forward to seeing more of your work!
ReplyDeleteI'm so glad you could join us! I'd love to walk every morning like I used to! You make good use of your time...
ReplyDeleteAn inspiring post that makes me eager to get out and draw or bring some of the outside in to draw from. Looking forward to seeing more of your posts.
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