I love to draw. I luuuuuve to draw. Love it. Somebody get me a pencil.

I love it so much that I did it professionally for thirty years, along with all other kinds of graphic design. That included technical illustration, flow charts, tables, paste-ups, caricatures, and posters. It also included - in the early nineties - illustrating on those new-fangled Apple computers. Our bosses had them delivered and set up in the art room, and then they said, "Here; learn this." That was fun, too.

But what I loved best was drawing with a pencil, and then inking it. But, drawing is only part of illustrating. The illustrator also has to arrange the elements in his picture in a pleasing and logical way. In other words, the illustrator must also possess a sense of design. He or she has the power to lead his or her viewer's eye wherever the artist intends to take it.

In dealing with clients, I discovered that it wasn't enough to be an artist; there were times when you also had to be a psychologist. A client needed a picture of a crowd of ethnically diverse people for a company poster. I had been doing the "ethnically diverse' thing for years, before it became fashionable. I had been taught well by the examples of comic artists Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko.

So, I did my research and drew a picture of happy people, similar to the one below:

The illustration made the client uneasy. "I can't tell you why; something about it bothers me." This is where the psychology came in. It's called "human factors".

For example, when the first automatic cash registers came in, a man's voice would read out whatever was being rung up. "Tuna, spaghetti, bread, pork-and-beans ..."

Supermarkets soon discovered that customers were avoiding these new cash registers. Call in the psychologists! It was discovered that the customers - who were mostly women - felt uncomfortable that a strange man was reading off their shopping lists aloud. When the voice was changed to a female one, the problem was solved.

In the case of the smiling people, I soon figured out what had bothered the client.

Teeth.

Everyone was smiling and showing their pearly whites. Obviously, this had awakened some primeval sense of survival in my client. I redrew their smiles into grins, like the picture below, and the client was happy - and even smiled.

Some of my clients and I, however, were not always on the same wavelength. I once did a picture of a young woman sitting at a computer screen. After penciling it, I inked it with a technical pen, and then took a number 3 Windsor-Newton water color brush to add form and definition to the figure. Well, I went crazy with the brush; I loved adding wrinkles and folds to clothes. The end product was similar to the one below:

Unfortunately, the client was quite upset and he showed it to my boss, claiming the picture was, "sexist." I had never intended it that way, and didn't see it as anything but a picture that I had fun inking.

People "read" art. One person might see one thing, and another person might see something else. Below are two pictures I took off the internet. Most likely, you've seen them before. So, is that a white vase, or the green silhouettes of two people gazing at each other? Is that a lady looking at herself in a round mirror - or is it a skull?

Nevertheless, I re-did the illustration, putting the baggiest sweater I could draw on the young lady. A few years later, I did a caricature of a woman who was going to retire. "Make her dressed in shorts, relaxing on a chaise lounge, drinking an iced tea."

I finished the drawing, inked it, and got ready to hand it in. Taking a last look, I stopped. If you "read" the picture one way, it was perfectly fine. However - the way I had put some of the shadows - if you read it another way, she had no shorts! Luckily, I caught it in time and fixed it.

There were also clients who were fun to collaborate with and had very good ideas themselves. One client needed a tri-fold for the new corporate dialling system. Because we had brilliant scienetists from all over the world - to whom English was a second language - idea was to illustrate the instructions with pictures. I was planning to use a hummingbrid to represent the dial tone. The client said, "Why not a musical note?" That was a much better idea, and that's what we used.

So, it's not enough to know how to draw, and it's not enough to know how to design. Commercial art can be fraught with misunderstandings and miscommunications. But, I still love to draw. I love it.

Somebody get me a pencil.