It was an itch I had to scratch.

Too many times I had sat with the blank paper in front of me, pencil or pen poised — and finding no inspiration forthcoming. Even just giving my imagination free rein failed.

I wanted to draw, but draw what?

I decided to go back to first principles. It was like going back to junior school. I found a picture I liked — I have a soft spot for the old Sentinel steam waggons of the 1930s and 1940s, so I found something suitable in my library. I took some tracing paper, and carefully traced the main elements of the photograph. If nothing else, the finished drawing would be more or less the right shape! Once complete, I flipped the tracing over and, using a 6B graphite pencil, rubbed over the reverse of the drawing, effectively making a simple carbon paper. With the drawing inverted once more, I carefully retraced the pencil lines with a hard pencil, transferring the image to my sketch pad.

I ought to have inked the original tracing, because I couldn’t actually see all the lines once I had covered the reverse with pencil rubbing! Lesson (re)learned.

Once I was happy with the “sketch”, I propped the original photo up in front of me, picked up a fine black ink felt pen and started to draw. I referred to the original to clarify the odd shape here and there.

The result you can see above. It’s not perfect. I don’t care. It pleases me. It felt good to have a drawing instrument in my hand once more. I will do more soon.