Steve Draws a Picture
A picture of Steve drawing a picture, drawn by Steve, who evidently speaks of himself in the third person sometimes.
Sometimes, I (the aforementioned Steve) know right off what I want to draw. At other times, I have to think about what to draw. On this particular day, I was thinking, “What should I draw?” And then from somewhere inside of my strange brain, I thought, “I should draw a picture of me drawing a picture!” It worked for Norman Rockwell, after all. And I am definitely no Norman Rockwell.
On the day that I drew this, I just happened to be wearing a burnt orange shirt and blue jeans. So guess what I drew myself wearing? If you did not guess a burnt orange shirt and blue jeans, you must not have looked at the drawing up above.
And no, we do not have weird stripes on our walls like that. I just thought they needed some texture, and the floor, too. This was a change from the watercolor-like backgrounds of my last few Art by Burnsland pieces, but I did not want everything to look entirely flat and plain. So I added some stripes.
You could look for significance in the items scattered around the room, but there really isn’t any. Or is there? No, there isn’t. But keeping on bringing it up as a question makes you wonder, doesn’t it?
Also, this is the first appearance of Cartoon Steve at the new site here, besides in the header graphic, that is. You can see more of Cartoon Steve (not to be confused with the real Steve, even though I am told that we look a lot alike) at the original Burnsland site.
Looking at Yourself
Have you ever wondered how others see you? And have you ever arrived at the conclusion that how you see yourself is not necessarily how others see you?
It can be a bit humbling when you find out how others see you. Maybe they see you lower than you see yourself, and that brings you down in humility. Or perhaps, if you are fortunate, they see you as higher than you see yourself. Which can either lift you up humbly or just give you a big head, which will then make them see you lower than you see yourself.
As another famous Burns (that would be Robert Burns, the Scottish poet) said in his poem “To a Louse”:
O wad some Power the giftie gie us
To see oursels as ithers see us!
If you do not speak Old Scottish, Robert is saying, “Wouldn’t it be great to see ourselves as others see us? It would be like a power from God!”
However, I often think that instead of spending too much time worrying about how others see us, we should just live our lives as we want to, following God’s plan. Do what you know is right instead of wondering what others might think about you. Serve God, and put him first.
But Peter and John replied, “Whether it is right before God to obey you rather than God, you decide, for it is impossible for us not to speak about what we have seen and heard.” - Acts 4:19-20
About the Artwork
As always, this artwork was created using the Procreate app on my iPad, which is actually in a gray case and not a black case, using an Apple Pencil, which is actually white instead of black. So see, this really is not anything like real life after all! That is what those real artists call artistic license. But I only have a drivers license, not an artistic license. Make of that what you will.
If you want to see some of the development of this drawing, here it is. First, I started with a really rough sketch to figure out the pose:
For some reason, I look really angry in that sketch. I was going for serious, but I think I overdid it just a bit.
Next, I created a more refined sketch, but still a little rough:
This time, instead of looking angry, I look like I am just staring off into space. Which I do spend a lot of time doing, but that was not appropriate for this artwork, either. Thankfully, I got it more like I wanted it in the final version.
That is why it is always good to start with a sketch or two, to help work out the kinks.
