Going forward, I am going to dedicate the weekends here at RJsCorner to showcase my artistic talents, especially in sketching. In my youth I was kinda proud of the sketchings that I made. For some reason, I never tried to develop that talent beyond the very rudimentary level, and now after all these years, even that level of skill has vanished. Starting today, I aim to finally become at least an amateur sketcher.

I am very much entrenched into the digital world. I am surrounded by it daily here at my 800 sq ft retirement community apartment. I’ve got apps that can take a photo and turn it into just about anything from avant-garde to absurdly enhanced versions of the original. Those apps are fun to use, but I kinda think I am cheating by not depending more on my pure artistic abilities.

Although we depend more and more on technology to improve our workspaces and even our private lives, we must never lose the ability to create things with our bare hands. As I mentioned in a previous post, I am going to try to immerse myself into this purest level of artistic talents. To achieve that, I have been investigating the available teaching materials and have chosen a book entitled drawing for the absolute beginner by Mark and Mary Willenbrink to get started.

When I read things now, I often tend to skip around, as I simply don’t have the patience anymore for “unnecessary” words. Contrary to that, I intend to go through this book on a page-by-page basis and become its avid student. They say “Practice Make Perfect”. I intend to do much practice.

Each week, I will be telling you about what I have learned and will show you, as crude as they might be, some examples of my work. By doing this maybe we can learn together how to become a sketching artist. I hope along the way, some of you who are ahead of me on this learning curve, will me and the other folks around RJsCorner with your insight and wisdom.

Over the years I have meagerly attempted to develop this talent, but I usually only got to the place where I gathered the tools needed. I was never brave enough to take it to the next stage. I am running out of time, so procrastination is not an option anymore. I am going to make this happen!

I have reconfigured my apartment office space to make a dedicated area for this project. All the past tools that were bought have been found and put there. I am ready to start putting lines to paper, so to speak. Wish me luck and come back on Saturdays to see how I am doing.