[70SATMan]

Count me in the ‘technician’ camp as well. There’s a definite artistic lineage on my father’s side. Great grandfather was a sign painter. My grandfather was also a sign painter by trade but, carved ivory, wood, painted in oils and pastels.

My father is artistic but, when he draws from imagination, it’s in true cartoon form, not in a juvenile artistic sense. He is also very technically adept in reproduction.

I’ve a strong artistic background. I’ve dabbled in many, many mediums including paints, wood, leather, metal, clay, print etc but, it’s all on the technical side. When I try to draw from the mind, it’s very hard, my results are not even as good as the cartooning aspect my father has. It’s a block and no amount of learning and practice over 50 some years has overcome it. Yet, I can reproduce images technically. Some of my pencil and pen/ink work is almost photographic but, it takes me a long time to do.

It took quite some effort to allow myself to let go in my paintings to break from the precise into impression. I’m a control freak by nature. Still, I need to work from photographs. I’ve always felt it was ‘cheating’ in some way though my wife disagrees.

My oldest daughter inherited the abilities but, doesn’t have the block that I have! The girl has amazed me from her earliest drawings. She always had a small sketch book with her, her ideas just free form flow out of her onto the paper. I simultaneously experience awe, pride and jealousy when I look at her work, lol.

My youngest daughter is a bit more like me. Drawing was always a struggle with her. Where art and all of its varied mediums is like a flame to my moth-like oldest, “art” doesn’t pull at my youngest in the same way except,,,,

Her talent is in the tactile. She sculpts and throws clay which doesn’t surprise me because as a young one she couldn’t just look at a thing, she had to touch it which I now know was part of her way of seeing it.