Drawing portraits? Who,
me?
I actually can draw...some.
In grade school I spent far too much time
scribbling cartoons and comic strips for myself (and not listening to the
teacher drone on and on.) But skill-wise I never got far beyond that.
My elementary abilities did come in handy
later when I somehow ended up in an advertising agency where I was a creative
director and copywriter.
My job usually found me working with an art
director on concepts for print ads, billboards, television commercials,
transit posters and even advertising jar grippers or the back of bus benches.
I'd suggest possible headlines and the verbal
direction and "voice" of the ad, while my partner would propose the
graphic approach, look and visual "feel."
At least that was the theory.
In practice we'd go back and forth, with my
partner giving me his reaction to my suggestions, while I'd sometimes do little
doodles, maybe layout ideas, to show him what I was thinking about his or her
end of things.
Sometimes one or the other of us got annoyed
when our team mate intruded too far into our end of the business. Petty?
Sure, but normal.
I'd get annoyed because "art guys"
never seemed to be able to spell and would make layouts with my headline words
spelled wrong.
On the other side, my always insightful
and brilliant doodled ideas for visual look and feel were often greeted
with " Listen, I know what I am doing. I am the one who went to Art School
while you were goofing off studying literature."
In fact, it seemed to me that "art
guys" claimed to be the sole possessors of some kind of MAGIC that
ordinary mortals like me could never lay claim to.
I jealously fretted for actual decades,
wondering if I could somehow penetrate that proprietary sorcery. Could I learn
to draw, really draw? Could I find a real reason to actually call myself an
artist as well as a writer?
Completely unexpectedly, when this present
decade was still young, something happened to show me that I could.
You'll have to wait until the next blog entry to
find out what that was...and see the results.
