Imagination is the most simplistic form of art. People use their imaginations everyday in their jobs, at home, and anywhere they are. Whether you are young or old, you use your imagination. A more elegant form of art is sketching. After you imagine, you sometimes have the urge to sketch your thought to life. Many people, including myself, sketch according to their emotions, thoughts, or whatever comes up to mind. What do I sketch, you may ask? My sketching ranges from objects to an almost exact replica of a book or other sketching, from animals to faces, and everything in between. Before I took lessons to sketch, I could draw anything. Drawing and sketching are two very separate things in art. When drawing, you only draw the outline of the picture and make the object look animated. But when sketching, after you have drawn the outline, instead of animating it, you bring the picture to life by shading where needed and adding textures. All I could do was draw excellent portraits of game characters and my own cartoons. I decided that I wanted to do something new, so I took lessons to learn how to sketch.

First day of sketching lessons was a new experience for me. I had never taken art lessons in my life and I didn’t know what to expect. For that reason, I was extremely unprepared. As I walked into the art studio, I saw that there was a box on the table filled with pencils for every sketching situation. There were pencils for shading light and dark, pencils for sketching the outline, long pencils, short pencils, thick pencils and thin pencils. Also in the same box, there was a thick flexible gray substance marked with pencil lead. That unknown gray substance was to be my eraser for sketching. Then my teacher gave me a pad filled with fresh crisp sketch paper. He took out an apple and explained to me that he wanted to see what I could do by myself. I attempted to sketch the apple, but when I had finished, it looked more like a crater from outer space. My teacher told me what I had done wrong, but he never directly told me what to do exactly. Before I knew it, his hand was clamped on top of my hand and was guiding the pencil across the paper. I watched in awe as our hands worked together to create an apple beyond belief. It was amazing to how much potential I had to sketch because if you just added color to the newly sketched apple, it looked as if it was almost edible. I couldn’t wait for the next lesson.

Days passed and once again I found myself in the art studio sitting in front of three different objects. The one on the far left was a tan coffee mug, which I thought would look wonderful when sketched. I found myself trying to determine what the middle object was. It was a mix between a human mannequin and a tiger mannequin so I moved to the next object. It was the most beautiful crystal dolphin and when the light hit the glass, it seemed to produce an aura of turquoise around it. I thought long and hard about the choice of objects to sketch. The dolphin was truly a sight to behold, but I couldn’t imagine myself sketching something so magnificent as that, so I chose the next best thing. As I was attempting to sketch the cup, I discovered that there was more to the simple process than I knew. First step is to draw the basic shape of the object. Secondly, you are to outline the areas where there are shades. After, you then use your light and dark shading pencils to shade in the designated areas. When you are finished shading, you blend your shades with a different pencil, over shade the entire picture, and you are finished. Although this process may sound very simple, it is actually quite difficult.

As the lessons passed, I excelled in sketching and my teacher announced I was ready to sketch human faces. At that moment, he pulled out a magazine and decided on a face that took up the whole page. Now sketching faces is a little different than sketching objects. You must first sketch the features of the face such as the chin and jaw, lips and nose, and where the hair starts and cuts off on the face. After that, you shade in the shadows on the face, draw the extra details on the face and add in the hair and its shadows. At first, I didn’t know what I was doing, so I looked for my teacher for help. He must have know I would need help because he was there in a flash, his hand clamped over my hand guiding me. After a while I didn’t need his help so he sat there sketching in his own pad and looking at me occasionally. About a half and hour later, I sat back and looked at what I had done. I sat there staring in awe and I probably looked really dumb with my mouth hanging open. On my pad was a face from a magazine. It was something so exotic and amazing that I couldn’t believe that I had drawn that. I looked back and forth at the magazine and my pad and I couldn’t believe my eyes. I had drawn almost the exact same face from the magazine and I was in shock. This sketch was one that I cherished the most.

Sketching a face for me was my greatest achievement in art. I was absolutely proud of myself for having accomplished my goal by taking the sketching class. I could now draw and sketch anything anybody threw at me. I can only imagine what I could do if I combined the two techniques. Everything I learned, everything I drew left me speechless as I tried to thank my teacher when my sessions were over. He told me how I was undoubtedly horrible at sketching when I first came in, but looking over my work, he told me how I’ve grown as an artist with lots of potential. I had always dared myself to sketch something, but I could never sketch it. Now, you can give me an object and I’ll sketch it for you right on the spot! Nothing compares to this experience I’ve had in sketching for I didn’t believe I could do it, but I did. I was amazed at myself also because I saw how I had stepped out of my comfort zone of drawing random things to sketching beautiful objects. A life lesson I’ve learned through this experience is that if you set your mind to anything you want to do or if you put your heart in your challenges or goals, you can accomplish it. I put my heart in this experience and now I’m an expert at sketching.