Month: September 2022

There was a hint of Autumn in the air today at a local school’s wildflower meadow but the morning sunshine and hard work almost fooled a few of today’s community volunteers into believing summer hasn’t quite left us.

For the native plants that adorned this meadow, there can be no doubt about the change in season. They graced us with their beauty from March to September, until the time finally came for them to produce seeds for the following spring. Once their work was done, the work of the local residents began.

What a pleasure it was to illustrate these scenes of women, men and children working together in nature for a common cause.

Today marks the day I complete my “31 Reasons to Draw” challenge.

Just over a year ago, I embarked on thinking of a “reason to draw” for each day of December.  My challenge was to share them daily in my blog and perhaps inspire others to take up the hobby of sketching, or return to it. 

Creating daily blog posts during the busiest month of the year proved to be somewhat unrealistic for me, so I decided to stick to the plan but without the deadline. I am so glad I did!  Not only did I get to enjoy Christmas and work on other projects throughout the year, but I also got the satisfaction of knowing I hadn’t abandoned my mission… I’d just adjusted my own expectations.

So here we are, on the final reason to draw of this series of blog posts, and that is, to “tell a story”.  It may sound like a cliché, but a picture really is worth a thousand words.  And for that reason, I’ll stop typing for today, and let these pictures tell their story. Enjoy!

In the 19th Century, a newspaper discovered that sales increased if the articles were accompanied by pictures.  When photography wasn’t advanced enough to capture movement, artists were used instead. Can you imagine the world of advertising without pictures? Words are powerful, but imagine trying to advertise an upcoming event with nothing but 5 lines of Times New Roman text on a sheet of A4 paper. A drawing catches the eye and invites the viewer to find out more.

What makes you laugh? Probably several things come to mind.

For me it might be a funny dog-meme, an unexpectedly witty comment from a child, a scene in a film or book, a story told by a friend….  Sometimes they make you laugh just once, and other times, they make you laugh with every repetition. 

Without fail, the drawings by certain comic artists (such as this one by Joshua Barkman of Falseknees.com) make me laugh not once, not twice, but every single time I look at them.

Isn’t it almost like a magic sort of medicine for the soul, that something as simple as a drawing can make someone laugh over and over again?