1970 Was a Great Start
In 1970 my parents got me Ed Emberly’s Drawing Book of Animals. It was a very basic step by step book that let anyone with any talent draw several types of animals. I laid the book out on the living room floor pulling back the crisp new pages and drew each animal one by one. As the last of a February storm was giving us some fresh snow I propped a couch pillow under my chest and put pen and pencil and crayon to paper making a zoo full of animals then a circus train and finally a jungle forest filled with these animals.
Countless winter hours were already employed in my young five year olds fingers creating drawings and sketching. When this book came into my hands it was the first “Art” teaching styled book I had ever seen and was the beginning of my love for books about Art, Art History and Art Methods. I will never forget the dedication in this book just below a photo of Emberly when he was a boy, “For the Boy I was, and the book I could not find” and it makes me cry even today. Evidently, Emberly’s instructive drawing books were born out of his frustration over the lack of good, simple drawing books when he was a boy. He just wanted to learn how to draw. That’s all he wanted and he wanted to share this love with small children just like me.
Well it worked and I can say that there are people, places, happenings in a life that shape and changed me growing up Adirondack but Emberley’s believe that anyone can draw, and his books providing step-by-step instructions for basic drawing were strategic in my formation as an illustrator. The snow continued to fall for more than a month at our Limekiln Lake home that February of 1970 and it afforded me many afternoons to begin my life long pursuit of creating works of art. A quote from his book I used for the next forty years in many illustrations “You can make people and animals look sad, happy, mean embarrassed or grumpy by changing their eyebrows and/or mouths like this…” It was Ed’s belief that “Every one in the world should know how to draw a weenie dog wearing a sweater!”
I laughed at the simple steps and often altered them as I went making any animal I wished but I came back to the pages of his book time and time again to help me interpret the world I saw around me. Many people who read my column often ask how I got started drawing so early and why I took the time to keep all of those works. I think that a little bit of Ed’s love for drawing rubbed off on me and I chose to keep my journey as a record of my progress.
The best part for me is that Ed Emberley’s drawing books are available everywhere. They’re in paperback now, and quite affordable! Wrap up one with a set of colored pencils and you have a great gift for a child who wants to start down the road to recording the world around us all.
