Anybody old enough to remember the "Draw Me" thing? I found a suitable place to donate it. A prison.

[UTUSN]

Yes, sometime back in the early '60s I sent in one of those Draw Me things. This clown one doesn't look familiar but it's certainly easy enough to hook suckers - like, who can't draw a circle, a crooked flat line, a rectangle, etc.

So this set off a salesman coming to the house, telling my poor working parents that they had a talented child and that it would not be fair to deprive said child of developing that talent.

So I vaguely remember my parents sitting dazed at the thought of the talented child and depriving such a one and then a $300 figure being dropped in there somewhere.

So then these folio sized booklets started coming in the mail - I don't even remember whether monthly or when, and don't remember how it all ended, certainly not with a dazzling career in commercial art or museum hangings. And this stack of about thirty folios sat in a garage for scores of years, with some water damage and trace droppings.

So in the stage of life of cleaning things out, I dug them out and unstuck some stuck pages and taped loose covers and set about deciding where to unload them - I mean *donate* them. But as I turned those pages, many of them familiar to the point of banality, there was a wave of being overwhelmed, the thought of my dear parents indulging an illusion with their sacrifice.

After stewing and simmering, I snapped out of it by looking at this thing and seeing that it was way over the head of an adolescent, calling for an intense, very concentrated and focused accomplishment, not likely through a correspondence course. This made me wonder whether it was all an unscrupulous and pitiless rip-off.

So the wonderful internet brought out answers: That this company was not a rip-off, had started out as some kind of Federal (New Deal?) project, that Charles SHULTZ had been an instructor before Peanuts, also that the price today is $4K-plus. $300 in 1960s dollars is $2K-plus today. And the website showed that the curriculum has been redone a few times, much more down to earth and focused on the basics, not the way unreachable plane of high art in the stack of mine.

And then on to the resources for donating. Just entering "donate" into Google brings up incredibly unimagined ideas. I kept wishing for some outlet where these materials could be really put to good use as a way to make it up to my parents. And there it was: Through a Catholic ministry to prisons/prisoners, somebody with time to delve long and slow.

[MuseRider]

1. I am glad to read this,

my parents did this too. They knew I had a small talent with art but music was my main talent but still, when I was in Jr High they bought this. I could not believe this, they never did anything for me like this, I was the girl child.

Anyway, I found mine not long ago. They are sitting in a room. I looked at the books and found that they were pretty good. I sent a few lessons in back then, was encouraged to keep working at it but my mother would not let up and it became a grind and something I could find some power with. Still I felt so guilty when I just quit it. I am glad it was not a rip off, I am also glad to get the idea to donate it, thank you. I had not thought much about it because, damn we were poor and my parents for some unknown reason found their daughter something that she was interested in and bought it!

I think my entry was a Jiminy Cricket picture.

[UTUSN]

3. Thanks for that. Guilty and selfish are how I was feeling. I called my elderly sister and told her

and she put a kibosh on the bad feelings. She said that our parents had been totally excited about it all, had bragged to people, were hooked on the drama of the mail coming and going. I think my sister is just also just tying up loose ends of her own and also wants to let things from the past be set aside.

Despite the thing perhaps not being a racket for the appropriately prepared target audience (of whom we weren't), there is a large amount of unscrupulousness about it.

[femmocrat]

2. Yes, I do remember those, especially the woman.

I don't think I ever sent one in though. We couldn't afford the lessons anyhow. What did get me started on drawing was the Jon Gnagy "Learn to Draw" kit:



My aunt and uncle bought me one for Christmas when I was in about fifth grade. It came with real drawing materials. I loved it and did all the exercises. I remember the railroad tracks especially!

[UTUSN]

4. We couldn't afford the lessons either. Poor Mom and Pop. n/t

[MuseRider]

5. Oh god I had that too!

I loved Jon Gnagy! He was all I talked about for a while when younger than the other art set. He had a TV show right? I sometimes get it mixed up. I loved to workout (lol) with Jack LaLane and draw with Jon Gnagy. What memories.

[Rhiannon12866]

7. I remember Jon Gnagy!

I would probably not thought of him again! He was on in the afternoon, if I recall, and he made drawing look easy. That was not one of my talents, hard as I tried...

[CanSocDem]

6. Me too...sigh.

But now that I'm grown up and have some experience in sales I can see how easy it was to convince our parents. I played along for awhile thinking it was worthwhile, until I noticed that the 'correction overlays' weren't exactly the "personal instruction" they had promised in their contract.

My Dad got his money back over this, he said.

Later I took commercial art in an actual school and discovered that ArtInstructionInc. wasn't all bogus. Eventually made some money in the industry but probably not enough to cover the 'training'.

But I could do a profile of Bob Hope bettern' anybody I knew.


.

[cyberswede]

8. LOL - I drew "Tippy"

Alas, I received a letter that I was too young, but they told me to keep with it and submit again after I turned 13.

[UTUSN]

9. *UPDATE* - it sort of got accepted by the Prison Ministry on a "pity" (for me) basis

Having waited all weekend to call today, plus finishing up the taping job, I told my story *very* briefly to the Director of the program, who was all business and professional. At first she was enthusiastic about accepting the donation because she was under the impression that the course was on religion or theology. Then she said that the prison chaplain does the vetting of materials, according to prison guidelines, that they don't accept things that have repairs or tape because there might be messages being sent to the prisoners. She dropped in the phrases "To save you some time" and "Where do you want us to send them if they aren't accepted..." a couple of times.

But she chipped in a couple of her own stories of being ripped off by salesmen, how her parents got hooked into buying Great Books by the month and how a girlfriend of hers with freehand drawing talent also got hooked into an art thing like this.

So I went over there anyway, and she was a bit surprised and had a styrofoam lunch box set out in her office. She was brisk and said she goes "a hundred miles a minute," so I kept it brief. So she said she would take a few of the lesson books, then gathered from my look that this would break up the set so she said she would take them all to the chaplain this afternoon. I said that they could probably find some other place to give them to. I think it was a Pity Acceptance. She said this was very generous and instructed me to have a "blessed day."

I got the message that they are running a *serious* outfit and can't be distracted with dreamy eyed fantasies.