Drawing is NOT Sketching

So a little confession...I'm much more of a sketch artist than anything else.

Having not taken any real visual art classes since high school (circa 1990), I sometimes forget this fact...my glorified doodles are SKETCHES, what are defined by wikipedia as "rapidly executed freehand drawings not intended as finished work."

Well, shoot...I just didn't have a reason to FINISH them before.

: )

I remember the first time I was pointed out as a fraud. This would have been sophomore year in high school and the particular "pointer-outer" was a girl in my Japanese (language) class named Sharlyn (as with all the other students in the class, neither of us were Japanese, and there was often some goofing and certainly daydreaming that went on). Sharlyn WAS an artist and could draw just fine. I, on the other hand, did nothing but sketch. "See?" I said, "here's a good one of the Little Mermaid hanging from a fish hook!" (years later I would mature and decry the abuse heaped on a Little Mermaid pinata, but life is different when you're fifteen).

"That's not a drawing," she said, "that's just a sketch."

She was cute and I had a bit of a crush (or maybe that happened in our third year? I don't remember), so I paid attention. Yet to this day I've never been much for real drawing, only pencil sketches.

Still...doesn't mean I can't try.

Tomorrow, the "to do" list includes getting a new sketch pad...scratch that, "drawing pad" in order to transcribe some of my sketches into a more permanent, finished form. The problem with the current sketch pad (in addition to it being full of sketches and not drawings) is that it's too small...I need something the maximum size my scanner can use so that I can get full-size images and shrink 'em down.

Anyhoo, gotta' get to work, especially with regard to the maps. The good Doctor is getting anxious, and it's tough writing numbered encounters without numbers.

; )