My Love for Drawing and Painting

Drawing and painting is one of my greatest passions in life. Since I was a young child I have been drawing animals and birds. I began by copying from the illustrations in natural history books and later drew from observing real specimans (I have already posted about my natural history pusuits).

In fact one of my family’s oldest friends and artist Mr. John Everett Millais once remarked that, “plenty of people can draw, but you… have observation.” Young readers, have you ever known an adult who frightens you a bit? Mr. Millais was one such adult for me, which mean that when he gave me the complement about my skill of observation, it meant a great deal to me.

From this time I would draw realistic images, but from time to time I would include an animal walking upright or wearing a scarf!
When I was fifteen I received an Art’s Student Certificate, and was deemed that I could knowledgably create models, draw freehanded, and understood practical geometry and linear perspective.

On Saturday, October 4, 1884 (I would have been 18) I wrote in my journal:
“It is all the same, drawing, painting, modeling, the irresistible desire to copy any beautiful object which strikes the eye, why cannot one be content to look at it? I cannot rest, I must draw, however poor the result, and when I have a bad time come over me it is a stronger desire than ever, and settles on the queerest things. Worse than queer sometimes. Last time in the middle of September, I caught myself in the back yard making a careful and admiring copy of the swill bucket, and the laugh it gave me brought me round.”

What do you do when you are feeling down? What is it that you feel most passionate about, dear reader?

Source
Lane, Margaret. The Magic Years of Beatrix Potter. Frederick Warne Publishers: London, 1978, pp. 24,32-33.

Potter, Beatrix. The Art of Beatrix Potter. Frederick Warne Publishers: London, 1955.

Potter, Beatrix. The Journal of Beatrix Potter, from 1881-1897. Translated by Leslie Linder. Frederick Warne Publishers: London, 1966.