This is a traditional art illustration produced with Copic markers and Prismacolor colored pencils, on a blanks sketch cover for an All Star Batman#01 It features Micheal Keaton and Michelle Pfeiffer from the Tim Burton films. See more at Sketchcardsandcovers.com
Public art show "Cruisin the Square" for our town, Pontiac, IL. Local artists were given a fiberglass car or truck to alter as they wished. I turned mine into what might happen if I journaled on my car as I traveled Route 66.
Two wicker chairs in the sun.
One for the waiting,
one for the hoped-for.
The table between them
holds its silence,
its place set for bread or talk.
I draw what is here—
lines quick and unerasable—
and what is not here,
her presence,
waits with me in the white of the page.
Imperfect Lines, Honest Presence
This sketch is not perfect—and that’s exactly why it’s alive. The bold figure, the dissolving hat, the tilted chair: all of it feels unfinished, fleeting, caught in motion. It’s what the Japanese call wabi-sabi—finding beauty in the imperfect, the impermanent, the incomplete.
But there’s something deeper here too. A quick sketch is not just what the eye records. It’s what the soul permits. To draw without fixing, without polishing, is to admit the world will not hold still for us. Life slips past. The lines break off. And yet, somehow, the essence remains.
When you sketch this way, you are not the master of the moment—you are its guest. The pencil does not carve permanence; it pays attention. The act of drawing becomes an act of being present, of honoring what is already vanishing.
So here’s a challenge: grab a pencil and sketch someone near you in sixty seconds. Do not erase. Do not perfect. Let the lines falter. When you finish, ask yourself: What truth did the imperfection reveal?
Perhaps presence itself is the real art.
I drew this mechanical horse. I had this idea of making my favorite animal with gears and plates and all kinds of weird stuff. Eventually it grew into this large drawing. Mechanical Horse - Mixed Media (Ink and Procreate) - Janelle Dimmett 2026 - www.janelledimmett.com
