With Books, 'You Can Learn How To Do Anything'

And these aren't even all the titles!

By DEB SAINE

Sept. 4, 2018
im2insaine@mac.com

 I laughed out loud the other day while I was listening to Tara Roskell's January podcast interview with art journalist Megan Jeffery after the topic turned to research.

"Once you start researching something you're passionate about," Jeffery said, "it's like, 'And now, I must research many things about this.'"

The Connecticut-based illustrator was speaking with Roskell for an episode of @KickInTheCreatives. And the reason I laughed about what Jeffery said was because I do the same thing. You could say I'm something of a research addict.

Mom is the primary reason I became a relentless researcher. She believed to her very core that if you could read, you could learn how to do anything, including laundry. I was 12 or 13 and we were living in an apartment with a communal washer and dryer.

When I said that I had "absolutely no idea" how to "do a load of laundry," she didn't hesitate to say "just read the back of the box of detergent and it'll tell you how." I already was an avid reader with a healthy appetite for ordering too many titles from Scholastic Books and the Literary Guild's book-of-the-month club for kids. After she gave me that bit of advice, it became part of my argument with her whenever I begged her to buy me yet another book.

"Mom," I'd say, "you were the one who said reading could teach me how to do anything!"

I also was a natural. My reading and vocabulary scores on achievement tests in elementary school were consistently in the upper 90th percentile as was my ability to comprehend reference materials. As a senior, I was fortunate to have been a student of my high school's best English teacher. It was under his instructions that I learned how to use the library and its resources to dig deep into a subject.

Mom's philosophy and Mr. Fox's tutelage about research have proven to be invaluable throughout my life from helping me with writing essays and theme papers in college to researching topics for interviews and writing feature articles as a reporter.

I'm naturally curious and I love to learn how to do new things. I think I died and went to heaven when Google and Amazon became regular parts of my life. With Google, it was like I was on a never-ending scavenger hunt with clues popping up in real time that sent me places around the globe in search of information.

Add being bipolar and a bibliophile to the mixture of research addiction and natural curiosity and there you have it: owning more art books than I truly need. Like Jeffery's, once I become passionate about something, I must research many things about that topic whether it's how to draw or create an art journal, make a sculpture using recyclables or delving into the use of watercolors or acrylics or colored pencils. I do the same when I find out about a new artist whose work I like.

The books pictured here are the ones
I used for creating the drawings I've included
that were done sometime between 2010-2012

And on a side-note, I ordered two of the three books Jeffery mentions during her interview: the Kindle version of "Cartooning: Philosophy and Practice" and a used paperback edition of "Year of the Doodle" by Dawn Sokol.

Here are a few creations I learned how to do using various books and/or web sites:

A Pinterest pin led me
to an artist's web site
where I found step-by-step instructions.

These art journal pages were
created using prompts from a
web site challenge I stumbled across
a few years ago. 

I used a book titled, "Draw Lab,"
to create the three drawings posted above.

"Drawing With Imagination"
(see above and below)

"Drawing What You See"
(above and below)

And then the next five were inspired
using books about cartooning and caricatures, circa 2010-2012.