I have another creative outlet that I gravitate towards from time to time. Drawing. Now, by no means do I consider myself an artist. My talent level is copying pictures of cartoons, and making them resemble what I’m looking at. Let me tell you about it and show you some examples.
how it started
When I was younger I loved to draw. I would draw pictures of my dream bedroom, which changed as I got older. Next, I would take some of the picture books we had at home and I would begin to draw them as best as I could. There were a few times that I would sign out a “how to draw” book from the school library and I tried to learn to draw with those. I never thought I was a great artist, but I began making my mom’s mother day cards and birthday cards by drawing her pictures. One time I made her a book about how great she was. She loved it.
Being put down
Now, I was in junior high and taking an art class. This would have been anytime in grade 7, 8 or 9. My art teacher challenged us with all sorts of projects. Most of them I didn’t like because they were beyond my skill level, and my teacher made sure I knew it. He wasn’t outright mean, but he did point out that my pictures were not good enough. One year we were tasked with drawing extra pictures at home for part of our grade. Each month we handed in our sketchbooks and he would grade based on how many and how well they looked. Most of my pictures got a low grade. There were one or two drawings that got good marks because the pictures I was copying from showed me where to do the shading.
High School
Once I reached high school I didn’t take art classes anymore. It was also around this time that I found my love of writing. So, drawing took a back seat and I dove into writing. In fact, if my memory serves me correctly, I don’t think I did any drawing at all in high school. It was not a priority to me, nor a passion. Drawing slowly drifted from what I did in my free time, as did reading. This is probably the time when I only had two loves – Media and Writing. This will age me a bit, but we also got our first computer around this time, so I took advantage of the dial up internet and chatted with people in chat rooms.
Returning to drawing
You’re probably wondering why I returned to drawing. Honestly, I’m not sure what started it. It was an idea that popped into my head as I was serving in children’s ministry. I would ask the kids who their favourite cartoon character was and then I would go home and draw all these characters and give them to the kids as colouring pages. They loved them. So, I turned it into a tradition and every year I would ask the kids and then I would draw pictures. Some were easier for me to draw than others. People, even cartoon people, are not my favourite things to draw and there was one year all the girls wanted a Disney princess.
keeping the tradition
The tradition did die after I moved up from table leader to room leader. Then instead of having a table full of kids I would wander around making sure the table leaders were okay. As much as I loved table leading, I loved this more because I got to know more kids. However, there was no way I was going to draw that many pictures. Plus, I didn’t want the table leaders to feel like I was overstepping them. Then the pandemic hit and we couldn’t do in-person church. After that I was so busy with work I couldn’t go to church for a while. Then I moved to my current church and joined the Sunday School. Right away I picked it up again. So, I got to work on drawing pictures for the kids. And I’m back at it this year.
Passion doesn’t have to be perfection
My junior high art teacher might still think that my drawing is not good enough, but to the grade 1 students that receive them, they love them. And seeing the joy and excitement on their faces blocks out the words of a teacher from many years ago. Their excitement spurs me on and I love seeing how happy a simple drawing makes them. Maybe I’ll get better as I practice, but I still do not think that I’ll be a great artist one day. My heart is in writing and drawing is just a hobby to bring smiles to children’s faces.
