First Sketches from 1990

A glimpse at some of my very rudimentary sketches from 1990. This was the year I first grasped a pencil again at the age of 36 after having my efforts at school laughed at by the "teacher" - I use the term loosely. At school I was heavily into Spider-Man and other Marvel comics and tended to draw cartoon-like people with somewhat exaggerated muscles... "Teacher" never showed me how to draw better, he just took a glance and sniggered under his breath.

Anyway, for some reason 20 years later I decided that I was going to have a go again and bought a small sketch pad on holiday on a campsite in Sidmouth. This was the very first effort. It encouraged me to do a few more during that week.

I soon found that trees sort of overwhelmed me. I had no idea how to attempt them so just scribbled a bit. It worked after a fashion and to be honest even now I still use a scribbling technique for trees, though the scribbling is a lot smaller and more densely packed these days. This was only my second sketch in 20 years and I was doing them in plein air - outside... in plain view of everyone. The main object was to get the hell out of there as fast as possible! I'm much more relaxed now.

Anyway I survived the week and then once home started experimenting by drawing from photos. Trees were still an issue and this is an experiment with a different technique. I knew that what I was doing was mainly line drawing and had to find a way to introduce some shading into my sketches.

I'm not sure the technique was all that much better here, but it was a larger (A4) sheet of paper and therefore has more detail. Plus, doing it at home meant I wasn't as much in a hurry to avoid anyone coming to look over my shoulder! The nearest tram seems to have skidded off the rails a little, but hey...

This was whilst I was writing my first (and to date my only) novel, available on Kindle though not yet in paper form. Some day perhaps. Anyway this was an attempt at a scene from chapter two of the book and I think it remains the only sketch to have come out of my imagination rather than an actual scene.

So to go back to Spider-Man for a moment let me just remind teachers that your power over your pupils and students whether great or not still comes with great responsibility. Had I been encouraged I'm not sure where my life might have taken me. I'd probably be a starving artist now instead of happily retired after a rewarding career... This is the first outing for the vast majority of these drawings. I've had almost another 20 years of practicing since and am now almost nearly competent...

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