Learning to draw

The Waterseller of Seville
by Diego Velazquez

If you follow this blog, you know that during the summer, Kelly, Christian, and I sit down together for a half an hour to an hour each night to draw.  We have been going through Mark Kistler’s Draw Squad.  (That reminds me, I need to ask our friend, Dellas if he is still working through his book–maybe the kids can Instant Message him.)  It is funny how, even though we are going through exactly the same material, we have our own distinctive styles.  I got a clue to how that happened last night in a brief discussion with Kelly.  Most of the night I was home alone because Lorena had her Calculus class, Kelly went babysitting, and later on, Lorena took Christian to his Cub Scout meeting.  When Kelly got home, we were sitting around talking.  The conversation turned to her cartoons and her illustrated letters.

She said, “Do you know the lines I draw on the cheeks of my characters?  I draw them like that because that is the way Robert McCloskey draws them.”

In our opinion, for what it’s worth, Robert McCloskey is the premier illustrator of children’s books ever.  Our favorites are his illustrations in the Homer Price books that he both wrote and illustrated and the Henry Reed books that he illustrated for Keith Robertson.  We read every one of those books we could get our hands on.  We even bought three or four out of print books.

We read those books because they were fun.  The incredible illustrations in them are part of what makes them so fun.  Kelly would like to write stories in that same vein.  McCloskey’s influence on both her drawing and writing styles is a super way to develop her skills.  In the next few days, we are going to post a short story her that she is writing for her homeschool.  I am looking forward to both the story and the illustrations; she will not let me see it until it is finished.

We have talked about art a lot more since we began our drawing sessions than before.  Now and again we go to Elmer’s Pancake house in Albany on Saturday mornings.  They have tons of Norman Rockwell paintings.  Last year, Kelly read a book name I, Juan de Pareja.  It was about a slave who worked with Diego Velazquez.  When we looked at Velazquez work, we noticed that there were some amazing similarities between his work and that of Rockwell.  Really, letting the masters influence your work is a wonderful thing.