The only creative talent I envy is the ability to draw pictures.
I can do a decent square - drawing's equivalent of knowing how to boil an egg - but that's about as far as my artistic skills stretch. Asked to extend my square into a cube, I'd probably produce M. C Esher's idea of a Kafkaesque Euclidian Hell.
Light and shade, significant form, perspective, different types of pencils: all these I've studied and practiced until my pink eraser is reduced to mere rubber crumbs on a crumpled page.
At this point, I might know more about the art of the sketch than Michaelangelo, yet my figure studies still resemble inchoate crayon scribbles on scrap paper taped to the fridge by an indulgent mother. I recently tried to draw my dog curled up by the fire, for example, but the result looks more like a stegosaurus flattened by a meteorite.
My brain knows what the right line to follow but my wrist and hand would rather take a detour.
Without a doubt, this is because I'm a natural cartoonist who subconsciously wants to turn every portrait into an Edward Gorey ghoul or an Addamite grotesque.
John Ruskin's excellent 'Elements of Drawing' at my side, I attempt to trace the contours of my own face in the mirror but my effort automatically becomes a moon-shaped minimalist caricature before I'm even aware of what I'm doing.
Saul Steinberg once described himself as "a writer who draws." Well, I suppose I like to think of myself as a cartoonist who blogs.
My only regret is that I might have made a reasonable fist of a career from cartooning if I could actually draw.
