It was about forty years ago. I was a missionary in Skowhegan (Maine) and at the end of a meeting my zone leader came up and gave me a stern lecture on the importance of paying attention to the speaker’s message. I was a little bewildered – then he pointed to my notebook which was covered with drawings. ” You need to be paying attention rather than doodling”
I looked at the “doodles” for a minute, then rattled off the speaker’s message almost verbatim. What nobody understood is that my drawings were mnemonic triggers for my memory that were just as effective as any written word ever was. It’s a mistake people still make.
My birth must have been painful for my mom – I am firmly convinced that I came into life holding on to a #2 Ticonderoga. I was always drawing but I didn’t realize that I was unique until I was about eleven. I figured that everyone could walk, talk, write and draw. I certainly used my artistic talent in anyway I could. In every class I would try to get the teacher to take a diagram or drawing instead of a paper. I left a trail of art all up and down the New England States mission and I was in great demand as a briefing officer in the military because my visuals did such a good job of complimenting my presentations.
Even though I don’t produce as many major works as I did when I was younger I am still drawing all the time. Every week or so I draw a cartoon for each one of my grandkids and send it off in the mail…so they know that “Papa MoonDog” is still thinking of them. I also draw for personnel development; at age 89 Michelangelo Buonorotti muttered “ I still have so much to learn”. At 61 I look at the wonderfully stylized work of Amanda Conner, Paco Medina and other comic artists half my age and try to emulate them as I work on my sketchbooks. I marvel at the way they can be so effective with so few lines ( the answer being the lines they put down are absolutely correct)
A lot of times I just draw to entertain myself – to record ideas I may expand upon in the future or reflect/remember treasured images and friends from the past. Whatever the case may be, drawing – the basic art – will be part of my life until the day I die. There will be a #2 Ticonderoga clutched in my hands they day they find that I have “moved on to better things”
David R. Deitrick, Designer 