Dan Tolva

Drawing Power Dan Tolva

There I was, in a fifth-grade math class at the Washington State School for the Blind, all attentive, focused, and diligent. Too bad I wasn't at all interested in math. No, more often than not I was hunched over my desk drawing planes, boats, cars, even guns. I kept drawing through college and during my early years as a family man and journalist in the early 1970s. I continued to draw through the succeeding decades, but really got a boost in 2013 when I downloaded the art software Adobe Illustrator. With a little work, I could soon draw better planes, boats and what have you much better than ever. In 2016, inspired by my youngest daughter, a real artist at heart if you ask me, I decided to round up as many drawings as I could find and put them in a book. This is the result. This is unabashedly a guy's book: No big-eyed kittens, pretty still-lifes, or soft landscapes for me, thanks. But I hope both men and women will enjoy these drawings, and realize that there's little one can't accomplish with a bit of inspiration and hard work. Not even a lifelong vision problem kept me from tackling those drawings.