Thoughts on Drawing - Josh Zlotnick

My interest in drawing has its roots in 7^th grade, pubescent Josh. I realized I was half decent at looking at pictures of my favorite cartoon characters and sketching them out. This led to a brief span of making drawings for my friends who would request their favorite characters. I swear I drew Sebastian from The Little Mermaid perfectly once, but I gave away the original to someone in 2^nd period French Class.

Most of my inspiration came from books my mom bought me from Barnes & Noble and a website I stumbled upon called www.elfwood.com. Through drawing I could channel all my nerdy interests into something productive, and I really enjoyed recreating characters or scenes. However, I was never one to draw from my imagination.

After those middle school years, drawing took a back seat because I had high school, sports, and eventually college on my mind. It was not until last semester when I studied away at the Duke Marine Lab that I picked up a pencil and a sketchbook again. If you are unfamiliar with the Duke Marine Lab it is located on Piver’s Island, a tiny spot of land across from Beaufort, North Carolina. It is a wonderful place and I had an amazing experience there, but I felt a bit isolated on the island at times. I turned to drawing for relief and would often spend evenings sitting on the docks drawing pictures from my Iphone.

Sketch of Cover Art from Robert Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land

Sketch of Hiccup and Toothless from How to Train Your Dragon

From these two sketches I hope you can get an understanding of the type of drawing I enjoy. Both are fairly simple, but I like when the subject matter has some emotional or nostalgic meaning to me. I am curious to see what these drawings could look like with the set of skills I have acquired over the semester, but I also prefer to draw new pictures instead of revisiting old ones. This is the form that drawing takes for me, and I plan on continuing this art through college and beyond.