Draw a drawing

I can't draw. It's a fact of life. It's universal truth. It's a substantial verity that, Gordita Von SloppyHand, cannot draw. It's true. Let me prove it to you.

I present to you Exhibit A.

These represent my typical church doodles.

Are you convinced yet? No? Well, let's take a closer look. I'll ease you into the ugliness with some of my best drawings first.


This is me. Note that the drawing is not to scale. My arms are much skinnier in person.




Birds in the sky. This is one of my more artistic selections.




This is a dog. The fact that I have to even specify that this is a dog is an indication that my dog is not a very true representation of what a dog actually looks like.




And this is the pièce de résistance. A cat. "Meow," says the cat. "Meow indeed," says I.



Now we get into some less explored territory for me. These sketches are rougher than the first few.



An elephant. You can tell it's an elephant because he has big ears and a long nose, also called a trunk.




This is a pig. Pigs have curly tails and pug noses.




Mouse. Need I say more?



So we've established that I am not a natural cartoonist/drawist/artist. I lack talent when it comes to holding a writing utensil and creating. It's just not me. So I have been working at my drawing skills. I have been practicing using the following tools and tricks.

• Trick 1 is key for me. I used a Bamboo Pen & Touch. A gift from the Huz (after I asked and begged and mentioned and hinted and begged some more for it), it allows me to draw on the computer with a pen. It's awesome. And maybe my computer drawings will someday translate into pen and paper drawings. Who knows.

• Second trick: Adobe Illustrator. Using the Bamboo in Illustrator is like a revelation. In Illustrator, I choose the paintbrush tool and it smooths out all my shaky lines. It's super awesome. Also, I can select each individual line and manipulate it, rotate it, size it, move it, etc. So if my lines don't quite match up, I can move them around until they do. Sure that sort of thing wouldn't be possible with pen and paper, but that's the benefit of electronic drawing.
• Third trick: I find an image that I would like to reproduce, and I trace it to get the basic shape I want, then I add and embellish to my heart's content.
• Fourth trick: I ask TC to look at my work and make sure it looks decent. Because after staring at something for so long, it's hard to tell how it really looks.

Here is what I have been able to create using my four tricks.

First:

An elephant, which is part of my alphabet art project. So see the line drawing, the outline of the elephant? That was me. ME! Crazy right? And then I put together the rest of the image.

Second: A quail. Again, note the outline of the quail.

While my quail and my second elephant may not look like much if you take them out of context, a simple comparison of my pencil and paper drawings vs. the quail and elephant tell the whole story.

I mean, which would you rather look at? This elephant?


Or this elephant?

That's what I thought. The first one. Wait, the first one? You're breaking my heart! I spent hours on elephant 2. I spent seconds on elephant 1. Come on people, you're breaking my tender and fragile heart!

Well, I guess it's time to go back to the drawing board (pun intended).