My life's experience with drawing - written by possibly the world's oldest living 'emerging artist'.  

I think I started drawing at the age of five or six and I remember laying on our olive green 'shag' carpeted living room with a pencil and tablet of paper that my mother gave me.   She was an enthusiastic, creative, and the best promoter I ever had, encouraging me to the nines, buying me art books such as "Walter T. Foster's" guides to drawing horses, faces, figures, and on and on.  One of my favorites was an American illustrator's book on drawing the human figure by Alexander Loomis.  At the age of 67 I still have that book to refer to.  I remember that there was a lot of anatomical exposure in it , but it seemed really natural to me and it didn't seem to bother my church going parents at all.  My other favorite was Foster's book on 'How to draw Horses' and I'm certain that I copied every drawing in that book.  

I also enjoyed making up my own ornamentation, kind of a personalized vocabulary of elaborate scroll work, sketching away with my pencil and listening to Nelson Eddy singing the leading roll in 'Willie the Whale' a story about a whale who's life's ambition was to sing at the met.  Figaro, Figaro etc. Sad ending though, as I recall Captain Ahab was in the audience and harpoons Willie in the last act of the opera.   

While my mother was my "impressario", my dad was my instructor and spent a lot of evenings teaching me the fundamentals of drawing on the back of blueprint paper that he brought home from his job at Lockheed Aircraft.  My dad was a frustrated artist who turned his talents into creating wonderful mechanical toys including a miniature carousel with horses, ornaments, mirrors and powered by a small electric motor and other scavaged parts.  He would often draw little cartoon characters for us and was the master of the Sunday Times crossword puzzle.  He suprised the family by taking an night course in sculpture and bringing home some incredible works, ie: John L. Lewis in full boxing stance and a life sized crowing rooster. It's sad knowing that if he'd been given some encouragement by his family he might have done more with the art.

He gave me a lot of drawing lessons. We worked on the kitchen table using a little book on drawing. (Wish I could remember the title) We drew on the back of some blueprint paper that he brought home from the Lockheed Aircraft Co., where he worked. He taught me figure proportions, basic perspective, the geometry of drawing, or the relationship of a solid geometric shape to objects in the real world. I remember loving it and it was a nice father/son bonding experience.