I always wanted to draw but never could. A Christmas gift in my teens didn't help: Drawing Made Difficult, it was called. I switched to writing.

And then, about three years ago, plagued by writer's block and inspired by the discovery that I could sculpt strange puppet faces, I picked up a pen and started copying photographs of birds. It was only a warm-up exercise, something to begin the day creatively, rather than sit sweating at a wordless screen. But it was joyous and unpretentious and somehow liberating. 

I used a pen, not a pencil: total risk, no possibility of corrective erasures. That was liberating as well: I had permission to fuck-up and just start another drawing. So they were all quick and impressionistic--the idea being to spend about half an hour filling a page, and then close the sketchbook, and let the real day begin.

And then, little by little, the sketches became the real day.

**

Some of the impressions had life and character. And as I got to understand the anatomy and weird feathering and musculature of my subjects, I understood what the incomparable Japanese printmaker, Hokusai, meant when he called himself “An old man, crazy about drawing”.  He lived to draw—because it revealed to him the essence of this created world.

I learned that drawing is all about lines and angles. I slowed down. A single drawing (still pen and ink) now took an hour. I discovered negative space: how drawing the space between an animal's legs corrects proportion. Greatly daring, I tried human faces. I ordered some books on anatomy and learned to draw muscles and joints.

I showed my growing sketchbook to a couple of friends. They were necessarily kind—but they were also impressed. I'd never be a “great artist”. I'd never even be a professional. But suddenly, I could draw.

I invented a couple of comics. Eighteen months slipped by.

And then, just as the pandemic hit, I made a new choice as radical as using pen and ink.

I got an iPad Pro, and a low-cost drawing app (Procreate), along with a second app for comics (ComicDraw).

**

That's a big transition. I stumbled into the unlimited wonders of an electronic medium, where a single plastic pen can reproduce the path of a fine pencil or a textured pen or a brush of greater or lesser size, or just about anything else I could wish for; where an infinite array of colors and hues, with greater or lesser transparency were always at my disposal—and my magical bit of plastic could imitate chalk or acrylic or egg tempera or watercolor.  Or I could touch a screen icon and my stroke would become an arc of glittering ocean spray or a cloud of crystals or the buzz of radio static. 

But all this mildly overwhelming choice wasn’t the biggest transition. The real issue was trying to draw with a smooth plastic stick on a sheet of glass. Without the natural resistance of a real nib on real paper, lines slipped all over the place, uncontrolled. 

That was a big problem, especially for me, since I value the precision of clean line above everything.

**

I learned, of course. 

The obvious solution was ordering a screen protector that would—according to the Internet hucksters—create a surface that was exactly like paper while being at the same time totally transparent and glare-free: far, far better (they claimed) than the iPad’s original surface. 

It’s my nature to resist such easy solutions, so I spent some weeks learning to draw on glass. That meant reversing my previous, eraserless, technique. Now, I had to create a multiplicity of lines and then, working with the eraser (the same pen, just a different function) eliminate ninety percent in search of something pure. 

I wore out a nib during that first month—but that was OK, because it worked, and the new technology was fabulous. By trial and error I discovered the “nib” that I liked best—at first, the “Procreate Pencil”, which produces fine, even, precise lines; but then I shifted to “Inka”, a nib that, like a dip pen, is a bit unpredictable, producing lines that are slightly irregular and full of character. I learned shadow; I played with color; and best of all, I could share a drawing electronically or drop it into a story.

**

Speaking of which: what about that writer’s block?

Stories began to emerge from the drawings. And the drawings could tell the stories, without words. Indeed, words have a different function, in a primarily visual medium. You need fewer of them and they’re no longer the diva who dominates the stage and, both hands clasped over heart, takes that final graceful bow. They’re the supporting cast, not the star.

**

Eventually, I got a surface for my iPad—and, yes, it’s an improvement; but it’s nothing like paper. And I still begin every day with drawing, always from photographs, usually discovering our fellow creatures—foxes, lately, and owls: amazing animals, so nimble and well dressed, so magnificently made, perfect for their different functions, and in their different ways, always beautiful.

An old man, crazy about drawing.