When I was young I spent a lot of time drawing. I started with "mazes" that resembled levels of Super Mario, and eventually progressed to drawing monsters and aliens one after the other, until I had an entire binder of lifeforms. While drawing was a passion of mine at a young age, that's all it was. I never took classes or made any attempts to further my skills, and I stagnated and found myself well behind my peers by the intermediate grades. I convinced myself that it was something I was not good at, and refused to do any sketching for several years.
As I got older and I became more exposed to different styles of art and artists, I realized that while I could not draw like most of my peers, I also didn't want to. Years ago someone liked my style to that of Raymond Pettibon, which is quite the compliment, even though I think it gives me a little too much credit. I will however say that I generally draw in black pen in a very crude manner, with coarse, sweeping pen lines hashed in to create form.
The opportunity to sketch still life was a chance for me to reconnect with the medium. I have little experience drawing real objects, so the reference materials and scenes provided in class were a great basis for how to go about doing this unfamiliar task. Overall, I was pretty happy with the result. I spent a lot of time working on fine details in the light and shadows, though that might not show very well in the picture.
