Another side of drawing

Can I do this? As the months passed during my first year learning to draw, I must have despaired of ever getting to grips with this demanding discipline. These two drawings, done from the imagination, seem to address underlying psychological issues I was grappling with in 1975, at the tender age of 18 going on 19.

This drawing, and the next one, almost filled one of those A2 sketch-pad pages, so I had to resort to photographing them, hence the grey quality. Anyway, this is one of the first of many quirky drawings, seemingly originating somewhere in my subconscious, that have become an integral part of my output. Ironically, in this early work I seem to come far closer to the sort of line quality I needed in life drawing than I was actually achieving while drawing from the model. There is a nice spontaneity of line here, and I enjoy the shading technique used on the sprawling tent in the background. As to the subject itself, it seems to speak of a would-be artist not at all sure of where he is going.

Spot the mouse. Somehow this popped out of my subconscious about the same time. Interestingly, the artist here resembles my father, who had died in 1974, the year I wrote matric. He was an architectural draughtsman. Several of the houses he designed are still to be seen around East London.