For this Father's Day, I figured I'll blog about my dad, because he's the guy who taught me how to draw. As a little kid growing up in small town Ohio, a career in art, or making a living at any kind of creative work, was out of the question. Art was for "those weirdos" in New York City and L.A.. The kids I grew up expected to either work in a factory, on the assembly line, or in the office next to the factory. My dad, Tom Emig was a draftsman, he drew huge pictures of machines, and machine parts, which the guys in the shop used to build the items. Drafting was as "artsy" as you could get away with, back then, in the Midwest. As I grew up, dad worked his way up to being an engineer, despite not having a college degree. He was a mechanical genius, he deeply understood how machines worked. I did not inherit that. But I did love to draw.
One day, on a camping trip, when I was 8, I was sitting outside our little camper drawing something, probably a curvy car, like all us kids drew. My dad sat down next to me, and asked, "Want to see how to draw a Jeep?" By Jeep in those days, he meant the classic "Army Jeep," originally made by Willys. Movies and TV shows about world War II were big in the 1970's, along with the TV show MASH, which all featured Willys Jeeps, so they were a cool thing to us 70's kids to draw. My dad showed me how to draw a side view of a Jeep in about 2 minutes. He drew one, which I'd never seen him draw before. Then he got a piece of paper, and I had one, and he showed me, step by step, how he did it. One tire, then the other, then draw the body around the tires. In ten minutes, I was drawing really cool Jeeps.
Seriously, it was freakin' amazing. I was in 3rd grade, and Jeeps, tanks, and halftracks, were our favorite things to draw in school, when we were supposed to be doing classwork. There were about 5 or 6 of us boys who were good at drawing, always competing to outdo each other. My dad's simple way to draw a Jeep blew my mind, and I practiced it the whole weekend on the camping trip. I probably drew 10 or 20 Jeeps that weekend.
But the best part came when I went back to school that Monday morning. From being about the #5 drawing kid in class, I sat down and drew a Jeep before class, and blew the other kids' minds. My new Jeep drawing skill catapulted me into the #2 spot, of the kids in class. One kid could draw really good tanks, so he retained his title as #1, in the other kids opinion, but I was a solid #2 suddenly. That totally helped my confidence in art, and I quickly used the Jeep drawing skill, and started turning out solid halftrack and tank drawings, vying for the #1 spot in class. While shy and dorky in most cases, I became "the kid who draws Jeeps really good," which was a cool status back then.
Looking back, my dad sitting down for a few minutes, and teaching me to draw a good Jeep, also helped me find something I was good at. I was a smart, dorky, super shy kid, who sucked at sports (except dodgeball), and I caught a lot of crap from other kids. But drawing was something that commanded some respect in school, and becoming "officially" good at something many other kids respected, helped me cope. And it got me drawing even more. Drawing pictures became a go-to for me when overwhelmed by all the other B.S. in life. It also helped me keep in touch with my creative side as most other kids were losing their creativity to "growing up."
Two or three years later, my dad taught me basic drafting skills, how to draw the top, side, and front view of an object, using the 45 degree line in the corner to transfer lines and points. He also taught me to draw isometric and oblique angles, another basic drafting skill. This led to getting straight A's in drafting in high school, and also led to me being a "creative dude," in general, which led to getting into pottery in high school, something else I got good at.
More than anything, getting "good" at drawing as a young kid, encouraged me to spend a lot of time doing creative things. I was a huge daydreamer, and always had big dreams, but never really tried to make them happen. But I could sit down and draw for 45 minutes, no problem. This kept me in touch with, and experimenting with my creativity as I grew up. That later led to publishing a zine, which was the first longer term creative project that I really committed to. That zine led to a BMX magazine job at age 20, and that changed the entire course of my life.
From there, I wrote for magazines, edited and shot photos for a newsletter. Then I got the chance to produce videos, and that got me into video and TV production. My point here is that helping a kid learn to draw for ten minutes, or do some other creative activity that they're interested in, helps not only their self-esteem at the time, but helps them learn to work with their creativity in general. And that has lifelong, lasting effects. While I don't make a decent living (at the moment), I'm now one of those "artsy weirdos in L.A.." I'm now best known as a Sharpie artist and blogger. And in today's world, creativity has huge value, and much of our culture and economy is based on creative activities. So teach your kids to draw, or paint, or sculpt, or play music, or whatever, when they're kids. In this post, you can see that I've evolved from drawing Army Jeeps.
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