A Picture is worth a Thousand Words!

The picture accompanying this blog, is a sketch I drew about ten years ago depicting a cute little chipmunk playing a harmonica. Except, the poor little critter has got it all wrong! For the way he's holding the harmonica, there would be no music coming out of it. The idea for this picture came from a postcard sent to me by one of my students when I was teaching a class on Harmonica Basics at Southwest Community School.

About ten years ago, I embarked upon an exciting new adventure when I took two community ed classes in sketching and drawing at Southwest High School from a talented young art teacher with the unlikely name of ZeeZee Justo. It was a wonderful experience in which I learned how to do pencil sketches and drawings. She taught us how to do landscapes, still-lifes, and portraits using different kinds of pencils. I learned that you could purchase pencils with different degrees of hardness with which you could get all kinds of neat effects and shadings. The only kind of pencil I had used before was a number two. ZeeZee was a very enthusiastic instructor who encouraged us to buy a sketchbook and to do daily pencil sketches. She also taught how to use perspectives to enhance our landscapes.

I took both her winter and spring art classes. In the spring, she accompanied us to Lake Harriet to sketch scenes from nature such as trees and the lake shore. I also did a sketch of the Lake Harriett trolley car. ZeeZee's enthusiasm rubbed off on me so much that I was able to fill an entire sketchbook with portraits, landscapes, and still-lifes. I then copied some of my most successful drawings onto separate sheets of paper. My friend Mary, who is an artist herself, showed me how to mount them into various-sized frames. By the fall of that year, I had framed enough of my drawings that I was able to display them at the annual Walker Church Art Fair. I even managed to sell one of them to a fellow Walker member. Some of the others, I hung on my living room wall. One of the things I enjoyed most that summer was going to places like the Lake Harriet Rose Garden and Loring Park with my sketchbook in hand to sketch various scenes from nature.

Although I haven't done much sketching over the past few years, I have fond memories of ZeeZee's art classes. It was neat to discover a new skill that gave me so much satisfaction and opened up a whole new world of creativity. I feel excited about the prospect of taking my sketchbook to a nearby park sometime in the future to embark upon a new art project.