In the beginning

It all started with frogs. Well, the actual magic started with frogs. I had been doodling, and making mediocrity called graphite art, or mixed media, but when I put forth the extra effort, and detail, I was amazed at the realism that can happen in a simple pencil drawing. I was immediately hooked on the pencil. I must say up front, that the above picture is as sexy as it gets, as far as my art is concerned, and I'm only displaying this in order to relate the beginning of it all. Obviously, I've named it "Sex On A Stick". From this point (I believe) the art does get better, and my purpose is served. What purpose? Creating wonderful pictures with the lowly lead pencil. I have tried Water colors, Charcoal, Pastels, Colored Pencils, and Acrylic, but I always go back to the lead pencil. To be honest, there's a bit more to a pencil than just the lead. The term lead is misleading. What we call a lead pencil is actually a nontoxic mineral called graphite, a form of carbon. Enough with the technical stuff.

Over sixteen years of playing around with the pencil I've learned a few things. I love drawing portraits of people and pets. Buildings and landscapes are fun as well, though I don't do much of that. It's very difficult to draw an actual tree (with leaves) so most of my drawing seem to be in the fall or winter. Hmmm! I am working on it though as you can see from my picture of the covered bridge. I live just down the street from one of the rare covered bridges (in New England) still maintained these days, so it's been on my mind to do a series of pictures. Here is the first of many, hopefully. This is a work in progress (WIP). It's good to show progress now and then, and I should have scanned it several times before I got this far.