Saturday was my 34th birthday, and my lovely wife Jennie gave me a moleskine sketchbook as a gift. If you aren’t familiar with moleskine (pronounced mol-a-skeen-a), they are luxurious high-quality sketchbooks. They are bound in a classy black cover and come with a cloth bookmark sewn into the binding and an elastic band for keeping the book closed or for holding down the page you are drawing on. They also lay flat when opened for easy scanning, unlike most sketchbooks which leave a shadowy gutter area when you try to scan them. It’s the kind of sketchbook that makes you feel like a real artist. You want to do drawings worthy of the pages.
My wife and I went out for dinner at Applebee’s (free dessert on your birthday), and I brought along the sketchbook. While we waited for our food I sketched this guy from a photo in a magazine. I think he’s a US Senator, not sure who. When you start a new sketchbook, the first sketch is always intimidating because you know it will be the first drawing anyone looks at when they open the book. Fortunately this one didn’t turn out too badly.
Thanks, Honey, for the terrific gift and the touching inscription. Your love, encouragement, and respect mean more to me than words could ever say.