Shorthand Cartooning

I drew this picture back in my college days, the middle 1970’s. If you look at it closely, you will see my shorthand in action. The rose on the trellis is one. I have drawn a thousand roses since I did this one. It is the formalized set of lines, colors, and shading that I always put together whenever the thing I mean is “a ro se.”

You can see it in the orange bricks of the goldfish pond. Compare those to the gray foundation bricks. The same shorthand patterns. The brick grid in the background as well.

The shadow patterns of wrinkles in the boy’s clothing are also shorthand I almost always do when drawing from my imagination. The faces in profile, too.

There is a language here spoken silently in colored pencil. Complex ideas pictured in a simple colored-pencil picture-language.