Vignette: An old sketchbook

This is a brief vignette intended to induce nostalgia.

       I found an old sketchbook in my attic. I thought little of it at the time and put it in the "trash" pile. Hours later, I carried a laundry basket of trash to the curb and exhausted plopped it down for the "spring clean up" crew to haul away. There was that sketchbook on top. I turned back to the house, stopped, turned back, snagged the book, and headed for the sofa. 
       A cold drink in hand I flopped, gloriously tired, on the sofa and started thumbing through images over 40 years old. 
       The first page was horrid. Disembodied and hideously disfigured faces stared back at me. I remembered the frustration of trying to draw faces. These were my first attempts at a realistic representation of a person. I was not yet twelve when I started drawing them. It was quite a long time before I improved. 
The back of that page was better. Long-legged horses cavorted on the page. They circled around a huge-bodied beast that had the virtue of being a three-quarter view instead of a profile. It showed a little imagination at least. The next page was devoted to hooves, tails, saddles and a few ears. Some were actually pretty good.
With a flip I moved into the realm of automobiles. Funny, but every car in the world seemed to have a spoiler on the tail and a scoop on the hood. In the corner, crowded out by all that horsepower was a bicycle. The wright brothers would have been proud of it.
       Another bicycle occupied much of the next page. It must have been dead, as birds circled it all over the page. You know those birds, the "V" birds that don't actually require much drawing. Alone, at the top of the page and separated from the birds, was a perfect Halloween bat, lacking only the string to be completely unconvincing. 
Did I draw all these close together? How separated in time were these? I can't remember. Did do then as I do now and sometimes fill in an empty spot on a page? Was I this prolific in those days? Moving from bike to bird to bat? Was that the "b" page?
      The next page moved away from the "b" theme, well… perhaps. There was a torso that was entirely too muscular to be a real man. There were half a dozen hands with bulging biceps and very small hands. Elbows seem to have been a problem for me back then. Shoulders too. Must have been reading too many comic books, every figure was entirely too fit to be anything but a superhero. 
The next page was torn out. With a flash, I remembered it. Odd what sticks in your mind. It was a "naughty" page. I drew some nudes. Men and women that certainly not were anatomically correct. But then, what did I know at that age. I remember drawing a woman in lotus who would have been unable to rise (or stand if she did) endowed as I had her.
       After the missing page, landscapes seem to have captured my attention. Trees and bits of trees, some flowing water, a bit of grass. Rocks of course, studded the page. Lots of rocks studded the page— and the next. I must have gone through a rock phase. 
      Crosshatching and hashing seems to have entered my repertoire at this point. Perhaps a new artist had interested me. There were a good many fantastic shapes and amorphous designs. I wonder if this was my "Steve Ditko" phase? Certainly the next few pages showed signs of surrealism. 
I flipped Forward and things just stopped. More than half the book was blank. Why did I quit? Did I get a new book? I know I continued sketching… have continued to this day. I flipped backward.
The last picture was a portrait. Full-faced. Shaded, rendered well, altogether well executed. A notation at the bottom read "as the Silver Surfer". It took me a moment to realize I was looking at my own face.
  

Reviews

[deeps]

Wow! This story kind tells me we are in the midst of shadows when we are looking at ourselves.
This is a very well written story. I like this alot. Makes sense and tells a wonderful and interesting
story.

[Ed Hart]

I can see that you're still sketching. This is a drawing of a life at two places in time. I'll bet three dimes and a nickle you didn't throw the book away...