Drawing the Line

In middle school, when art class was still a viable part of the curriculum for kids,  we followed along with a  teacher as she drew upon a large pad of newsprint set on an easel. She clutched a black felt marker between her thumb and the palm of her hand at a unique angle -- not because she was demonstrating a secret way to draw, but because she had severe scoliosis that warped her body and twisted her fingers so that only one hand was usable while the other wrist came to rest on her hip. The image of this less-than-5-foot-tall, elderly and acerbic woman standing at the easel was spectacular and scary for me as a sixth grader.

When Mrs. Burton drew the  weathered planks of a shack, the shingles on a roof or the bricks in a wall, I learned about the essence of a thing. It was, she told us, The Line that mattered, and we should never neglect it. I am certain she used source material, because what I did NOT learn in Mrs. Burton's class was how to conjure things to draw merely from my imagination. She taught us to see line everywhere. When Mrs. Burton drew the trunk of a tree and, even more thrillingly, its leaves, I also learned it was the absence of Line that revealed just as much visual information as its presence.

Lines, drawn with an Ebony pencil, jet black - extra smooth.