drawanyway.com

Rudimentary bed sketch

An early comment on a Draw Anyway post went along the lines of:

You’ve covered how to draw, where to draw, and when to draw, but not why to draw.

That person (hi, Sarah!) went on to say that she couldn’t really draw, and was quite happy that way.

Well, fair enough, I thought, and went on posting. Perhaps there is nothing for her here - though she continues to read, she says, because she likes looking at the illustrations.

It seems like her comment stayed with me, though, because now, weeks later, I find myself returning to it. Why draw? I could go into the fulfilment, the joy of learning and getting better at a skill, but I know from her personal blog that she already finds that in other areas of life - dance, and cooking.

But just the other day, I found a very practical answer to her question. We have a carpenter coming to do some work next week, and while he’s round, I plan to ask him whether he might be able to build a bed for our daughter. I’ve researched everything I can find online, but none of them are quite, well, special enough. Well, except this one. And that’s not cheap enough. By about £900.

What’s the best way to explain to a carpenter what you want him to build? Well, to draw it. A picture’s worth a thousand words, and all that. Admittedly, it takes skills more akin to those of technical drawing than those of a freehand artist, but I do feel that I have finally found one good answer to the question of ‘why draw’. Click on the ‘read more’ link to see my final images for the bed’s headboard and footboard.

A quick note about copyright. Why have I plastered my name all over these? Do I think they are especially good? Well, no, but I would be extremely annoyed and upset if someone came and nicked my designs, polished them up a bit and sold them on. So if that’s what you’re thinking of doing, please don’t. If, on the other hand, you’re a parent who quite likes the idea of something along these lines, feel free to contact me. Not only will I send you the original, larger images, blank for you to try out your own colour schemes on, I’ll let you know how the carpenter did, how much it cost, and whether we hit any snags. Nice, eh?

Flower head and footboard. We’ll probably go with this one.

Cheetah footboard.
Elephant headboard.

Idea for street headboard (left).


Preliminary sketches.