Early Drawings

This morning I was looking through some of my old drawing notebooks and came across a number of pictures that I'd drawn when I was 8 or 9 years old. There was quite a selection of random pictures - some of them were completely made up cartoon types, but the majority were copied from other illustrations in books or were sketches of household objects. Pretty much all of them were free-hand drawings. The earliest picture I found in the notebooks was this one, drawn in 1995, when I was 8.

Comic book characters seemed to feature quite a lot in the notebooks. Another one that was done, at age 9, was this picture of the character Tintin. The drawing was copied from the comic book 'Tintin in America'. I'm still a huge fan of all the Tintin adventures.

Although these two pictures are in colour, most of the drawings that fill the notebooks are only black and white pencil sketches. Here is an early example of me trying to get a realistic drawing of my bike. I remember getting that bike as a birthday present and being so proud of it as I rode it to primary school!

It's fascinating to see how my style and attention to detail change over the years. Sometimes I'm asked how I know what to draw next on a piece - and I always have to answer that I just follow what the picture says. I don't know how it works. There is a lot of practice, patience and providence - but other than that, I can't explain how it happens!