Learning how to Draw: When is it too Late?

I am the worst artist in the world. But not for much longer. I’m going to teach myself how to draw. That is, if it’s not too late…

A David Meyer Original!
A David Meyer Original! Wow, these are not good. Well, this is a house, an airplane, and a not-so-tasty bagel. Whatever you do, don’t eat it!

It’s Day 6 of my “open novel” experiment for Ice Storm, aka my “Development Hell” book. Yesterday, I reached 21,000 words of the second draft. Just 69,000 words to go. As expected, it was a tough day. I had to write a new chapter and shift parts of two other chapters around. I cannot begin to describe how much I despise writing new material while editing old material at the same time. It’s exhausting. But at least I’m still on target to finish this draft by June 30.

Learning how to Draw: When is it too Late?

I’ve always wanted to learn how to draw. Unfortunately, I never got past the stick-figure stage. But I’m determined to change that. My brain likes to work in a frenetic fashion. Sometimes I’m writing one story while my brain is focused on two other ones. It can be difficult to keep track of everything. So, I’ve started to storyboard future novels. I take these large pieces of poster board and scribble ideas and little drawings onto them. Unfortunately, my drawings are just awful. And that’s no good because I have a lot of visuals I’d like to put down on paper.

So, I bought myself a couple of how to books from Amazon. I picked You Can Draw in 30 Days by Mark Kistler and Drawing for the Absolute Beginner by Mark and Mary Willenbrink. I’m going to be working out of them for the next few weeks so expect to see plenty of photos of my work. As a starter, I took the advice of Mark Kistler and sketched a house, an airplane, and a bagel (yes, that’s what those drawings are supposed to be!).

Hopefully, I’ll learn a few things. Further down the road, I’d love to draw as another form of entertainment. I’m a huge fan of old school comic strips (Dick Tracy, Terry and the Pirates, Steve Canyon, X-9, Li’l Abner, and Rip Kirby volumes all line my bookshelves). It would be an interesting challenge to create my own adventure comic strip. I’m also interested in creating a Cy Reed-based adventure video game using Adventure Game Studio.

Other Stuff

The link to buy Chaos at Diesel (see sidebar) is still broken. On the bright side, things are moving forward and from what I understand, Diesel received a revised version of Chaos yesterday that should fix the problem. Also, I just realized my Goodreads link isn’t working. This seems to be a coding problem as the widget I use for social networking doesn’t have an “author” function. Finally, the Chaos paperback is still on sale for $13.25 at Amazon. Get it while it’s cheap!

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