Occasionally people have asked me, "Can I draw?"
Originally I did a Foundation course in art and design, which included life drawing. So whilst I can draw, I don't consider myself as good enough to work as an illustrator.
I did get asked once on a Panadol advertising/marketing pitch in 2003, when I was freelancing at Ogilvy and Mather. Malcolm Berry (one of David Ogilvy's old contemporaries and well past his retirement age) was looking after the pitch as head creative director - being 'old school' he wanted ALL the storyboard layouts as drawn illustrations (rather than done in photoshop) using pencil/markers. There was one illustrator/layout artist there, but the amount of illustrations needed that evening (it was already six o'clock) - 18 different storyboard concepts, six frame layouts on each, for the art directors (108 frames in total to a reasonable standard) - which was way out of his capability. So into the breach I went (being able to draw something at least) and over the next 10 hours (until 4am in the morning) I managed 54 black and white frames (9 concepts), which I was quite pleased with (though obviously not to the full-time illustrator's standard). After four hours sleep, I then went in. Fortunately they were happy with the concepts and I then had to single-handedly scan in all the frames, using an old 2003 IMac, add the relevant copy written and run out/ disk-up copies of all 18 concepts.
Samples of my basic drawing skill:
marabese