The lines, curves, and shapes reach out to me. They sit there on the page and try to tell me something. I search the image before me and find no words but my father’s signature in the bottom right-hand corner. I am fascinated by his work, his art on a white sheet of paper. After realizing I am lost in thought I turn back to my open sketchbook to see a half-drawn character waiting to cast a shadow on my page.

My father does not create but recreates the fifth element in front of him; Looking at an Original piece my father copies it with near precision. I am unlike my father; I do not copy but I trace. I trace right over the images of another sketchbook, the one found in my mind, the one sketchbook with unlimited pages. My hand is like the printer, hooked up to my imagination, the high-speed computer with good RAM and a bad memory.

I am no machine; I am human. Machines get old and rusty and eventually break. Humans develop. I have developed into who I am today, and art has created me. We are not who we become, we become who we are. My once half-drawn character now rests on my page like a forever lasting scar, not in my sixty-page sketchbook but the lifelong sketchbook in my mind.

Now burnt to the surface of life he stands, casting a shadow over my signature in the bottom right-hand corner. ‘Chris Ryan’