Drawing by Hand

I like to draw more since Daddy's tool box became my art box

Yesterday, I colored, with pastels, chalk, and pencils. I do garden design by hand now. Though back in college, I was the teaching assistant in the first computer-automated landscape design class in the country. Back then, I was proud to be freed of oversize papers and messy erasures that older students owned. I was sleek and modern and unburdened by backpacks or toolboxes filled with messy art supplies. 

I was good at the computer part. But I could never design well on a screen. It took a while to realize that my arms needed to swing. Sometimes as a child, my woodworking furniture-making Daddy taught me to loosen my arm to draw curves. “Warm ‘em up. Let go, but keep control. Stay loose but firm and you’ll get smooth curves,” he said as he drew out what would become someone’s headboard.  Later, an art teacher helped me understand muscle movements. He said, "Never let your hand or fist touch the paper. Feel the muscles in your arm. Feel the motion, make the curves.”

Yesterday, I colored designs for two different clients. One, a young civil engineer, who wears dapper clothes from a men’s shop. When we walk through his project, out in the field, he slips big boots over his fancy socks and he uses his arms when he talks. “The pond should be over there where the terrain flows down and slopes east,” he says in words. Then he says it again with movement.  The other client is a recent empty nester who’s moved into her new age-in-place home.  She uses her body too. Since the last time we’d met, she’s excavated grass from a huge area to create her new sunny perennial border. She’s a short lady with a sliver bob. She stands in the center and spreads her tired arms to say, “It’s a good size border, isn’t it? I'm proud I did this myself!”

Yesterday, I used colored pencils on bed lines, walk paths, driveways, and big curves.  I made green swirls for magnolias and yellow paisleys for day lily beds and thought of those clients.  But every single time I reach for a new color, I thought about Daddy and his artful woodworking. You see, by the time I realized I needed a messy toolbox for art supplies, he wasn’t able to do woodwork anymore. I found his old drill bit box where cylindrical and paddle-shaped bits nestled together sort of like pencils. He’d made this box. Like the furniture he made, like him, it's a bit rough but its smoothed in all the right places. When I draw, I probably use too many colors these days. That's not me being showy or bold with color. That's because every time I change colors, every time I reach into the box, I hear him say, “Stay loose, but firm and you’ll get good curves.”