You Never Know What Life Brings

A long time ago I learned that every decision you make will affect the rest of your life. Some decisions are difficult, some are easy. Some bring you trouble, some bring you success, and apparently some bring you family you never knew you had.

I don't know what made me decide within the past couple of years to try to draw. My high-school art teacher told me I had no talent for it, so I stopped even trying more than 55 years ago.  A funny thing happens as you age. You no longer care how good you are at something, or what others think of your efforts to do things you enjoy. For instance, I sing when I'm among other seniors. I doubt that I can carry a tune, but seniors don't make fun of each other the way kids do. I'll get up in front of them and talk too. I don't know if I make any sense when I do that as I don't write out a speech first, but for some reason it doesn't make me nervous anymore. And so, now I also draw and post the results on social media for all to see. I did that all through the month of October for Inktober. The rules said to draw something every day in ink and post it online no matter how it turned out.  I got lots of support, in most cases, and it gave me confidence to continue.

This is where the decision to take part had an effect. Someone I didn't even know liked my drawings enough to reach out and ask me if I would draw their dog. I basically said it would depend on the photograph. After a week or so she sent me a few photos to choose from. Most of them had the dog in the distance, and I could have gotten off easily doing one of them, but I wanted her to be able to recognize her pooch. So, I chose a picture that was more of a close up, but it was really hard for me to see certain key parts of it, like the eyes, and the ears. I ran it through my photo editor a few times until I thought I had some idea of how to attack it. Then I told her I'd give it a try.

She had offered to pay me, so this would have been my first commissioned work. But I didn't know how to charge for that. I have sold photographs and paintings in the past, but I figured a commission is likely worth more, since you are trying to make someone else happy, instead of them just finding something you have already done that they would like to take home. I sent out feelers to people who have done commissions and got a lot of advise.  A common theme seemed to be that I should charge by the hour a fee of  at least minimum wage, for however long it would take me to draw the subject and then add on the cost of my supplies. They also insisted that I should get half before I even began. Well, I had no idea how long it would take, and so I didn't know how much half would be either. Worse than that, since I'm new at this, I wasn't even sure I could produce a dog that would be recognizable to the owner.

Coming up with a price and taking anything up front was causing me to stall. I wasn't comfortable with that at all. I asked questions while I was thinking about it. I asked what kind of dog it was as it looked like it might be a poodle cross of some kind. It had the curly hair, but didn't have as pointy a snout as I'd expect a poodle to have. It turned out to be a purebred Parti Poodle. I'd never heard of those before, but it at least gave me something to look up online if I needed to clarify the shape of things. I asked how big she wanted the drawing and she left that up to me, as long as it was at least 5 x 7. I asked which of my Inktober drawings had caught her eye enough to contact me for this job. There were, after all, various styles done with all different kinds of pens. She just said she like my drawings. I decided ballpoint pen would be the best choice, for this particular dog. I told her I had to get some better paper as I didn't want to just do it in my sketchbook. That was really just another stall tactic.  I went off to look for some hot press watercolour paper and had decided I would draw the dog as an 8 x 10 since I knew how to price a photo at that size, so I at least had a base number to work from.  I found a pack of mixed media boards that said they were good for crisp smooth lines. I'd never worked on such a surface before, and they were 9 x 12 but I bought them anyway.  She seemed happy with my size choice.

That's when I made a whole new decision. I had been enjoying the whole process of drawing everyday until someone mentioned a possible payment. As we had not discussed that further and I really didn't want to bring it up again, I decided I would just do the job for the fun and experience and accept whatever I was offered upon delivery. I could have just mailed it, but I wanted to see her face when she saw the drawing as I hoped to be able to tell if she was happy with it or not. We arranged to meet.

When she arrived she was not alone. She had a sister with her.  As I mentioned previously, I had never met this lady before.  I did know that we were related in some way though but I didn't know she had a sister. Automatically, I got another relative!  It seems that while they also knew we were related, they didn't know exactly how. Once I verified who their father was I was able to explain that my uncle was their grandfather, and while we had all met this man at some point in our childhood, none of us ever knew him well. We had a lovely visit, and I do hope to see more of them in the future.

I believe the drawing was somewhat recognizable, and accepted by the new owner. My decisions all worked out in the end. I was rewarded with a bag of expensive goodies, I earned valuable experience, and scored a couple of new cousins.  Not bad for having a bit of fun and learning a lot in the process and all because I made the decision to start drawing again after so many years.