I wasn’t drawing for months, then I tried again. Some things take time, plus, the years 2020/2021 took their toll on me so I was too tired to draw and to be creative… Still, I tried.

And some things take a lot of time. It took me almost eight months from the A5 blank sheet of paper in my notebook, till the moment when I was mostly happy with the final fullcolor illustration, ready to be scanned! Once done and scanned, it required cleaning up some pixels and adjusting a few things, before making a couple of test prints.

Once I did some test prints and a few adjustments in-between them, the final A3 print was ready, framed and shining in all its glory.

I am not drawing much lately. Maybe it’s just a moment in my life, when I need to pause, to reflect, to take some rest.

But I am very happy with “The Party Tree” which I completed and sold at the end of 2021, in only one copy. And what’s more, the person who commissioned this artwork, was also happy! 💖

We make art for ourselves but also for others. The world is in such a dark state now… We need more art and more light in it.

(Edit: You can also see these three stages of the illustration in my Dribbble profile.)

I am so proud of our (now 9 years old, how time flies!) daughter, and so is Ani! Because, for some reason or another, she is not drawing much the last few weeks, but one evening (May 6th, 2021, to be exact), she sat down and started copying a nice drawing… and lo and behold! after at least two hours of careful, focused work, she was ready.

This is a good drawing on many levels, and it made my heart sing! :-)

I believe that when we make art of any kind (be it music, drawing, writing, poetry, or anything else), we become better, more relaxed, more “zen”, if you like.

And, yes, Simona was copying another illustration, but so what? We all learn while we copy other people’s work, and it’s OK — and not only because Picasso said so years ago. We also create new things while copying, we better master our craft, and we create new value.

“The quote in this form was a favorite of Steve Jobs but he but he was probably (mis)quoting Pablo Picasso who said “Lesser artists borrow; great artists steal” – who in turn might be rephrasing Igor Stravinsky, but both sayings may well originate in T. S. Eliot’s dictum: “Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different. The good poet welds his theft into a whole of feeling which is unique, utterly different than that from which it is torn.” – The origins of this quote itself is an example of great artists stealing.”
(# source)

I hope to see our daughter drawing again with such zeal, one of these days. Our world has become a bit dark place lately (and not only because of the COVID-19 pandemic, raging around the Earth since the beginning of 2020) so every little piece of art gives us more light. And we need this light. :-)

After I tweeted and dribbbled, I decided also to blog about a simple drawing experiment of mine. Here it is — the Flying Cloud clipper ship:

Flying Cloud (my drawing with a Rotring 0.35 mm pencil, an eraser and a simple ruler).

I used as reference the famous painting by Antonio Jacobsen:

Antonio Jacobsen: Flying Cloud, 1913 (the painting is in the Public Domain).

It all started with a couple of lines on the paper… (I know that my drawing has many flaws but making it was a lot of fun!:-)

In the next GIF file I tried to super-impose the two drawings:

The original painting and my drawing.

I love ships, and especially sailing ships.

I think that the clipper ship is the most perfect ship ever invented by man. Of course, with the coming of the steam engine, clippers started to disappear, but even today, they are still as perfect and beautiful! :-)