Drawing

I remember I was about five and was watching my older brother draw an old fashioned sailing ship from a model he had built.  He did a darn good job of it, and made it look easy, so I wanted to give it a try, too.  I sat down and worked on drawing that model, and although my attempt was nowhere near as good as his, I was hooked.  Since that day, I've loved drawing.  I drew on anything I could.  Paper.  Walls.  Floors.  But I never drew on a ceiling--that would be wrong.  I used up reams of notebook paper in school, and never on a note in class.  I drew.  When other kids were out experiencing the sex, drugs and rock and roll of the 70's, I was alone in my bedroom...drawing.  The drawing at the top of the page was done when I was eighteen.  I copied an old photograph showing the room where Abraham Lincoln died.  What a teen party animal I was...

I always make a sketch prior to beginning a painting, but I don't really draw as much as I did then, nor should now, for that matter.  But sometimes, I just like to whip out the old charcoal and go to town.  Here's one of Charlie Saunders, the Captain of the lobster boat I worked on.

Charlie wasn't doing needlepoint, he was doing something to the riding sail he used on the boat.  I like texture in my drawings, to see if I can portray how something feels, like this old house:

I treated each clapboard as a portrait, much like this depiction of a raft of old wooden lobster traps that had been left to rot on a rock ledge on the Maine coast.

And speaking of portraits of rotting things, here's me:

The only reason I did this was because I was having a good hair moment, and I wanted to immortalize it!