At Home On Piety Hill

Yes, it’s back to the drawing board one more time. My beginning drawing class is ending. This is an 18″X 24″ graphite drawing of Sam from a photograph of him, when he was about two years old. I’ll finish it up today and work on my sketchbook. Our instructor is also the head of the Grass Valley Downtown association and our class is on Saturday, so two times when they were having special events, we took our sketchbooks downtown to draw buildings, people, wine bottles and, this last Saturday, classic cars. I have a drawing of the tailfin on a ‘61 Cadillac going now. I still remember the day I took this photo, as a novice following Sam and our dog, Jet, around the yard, photographing anything and everything. By the time I shot this one, he had just about enough and wanted dad to play with him. Denise and I decided to work opposing shifts, so our kids would not have to go to daycare — I did when I was a little older than Sam’s age and look how that turned out! Anyway, it was challenging and fun, because Denise and I were both constantly tired, working lots of overtime and rarely saw one another. On the other hand, I had an experience most fathers didn’t back in the ’70s, going everywhere together — buddies. Sam and I had a ten-speed bicycle with a child seat on the back. In those days, helmets were not in vogue, but Denise and I were fairly progressive. Not only did Sam eat smashed up fresh vegetables and wear sun-dried cloth diapers, but he had a bicycle helmet! I didn’t wear a helmet, so it’s a wonder I didn’t end up with a brain injury, eating smashed up fresh vegetables and wearing sun-dried cloth diapers. Anyway, each day we would go peddaling through the orange groves and pastures in the hills above El Toro. We would finish our ride by flying down El Toro Blvd at about 35 mph. I would get down like a racer and Sam would put a hand on each hip, with his head down on my rear end and we looked like a racing team. Uh-oh, I’m getting misty… I’ll stop here.

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 29th, 2006 at 6:26 am and is filed under Art and Design, Each and Every, Family and Friends. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.