A while ago, someone asked Robbi to draw a picture of a kid riding on a bucking buffalo. And because Robbi is a nice sort of person who likes to make people happy, she decided to try. But she didn’t know how to draw a buffalo. And she didn’t know what it would look like when a kid rode on one. So she drew a sketch, a simple drawing with just a pencil to see what it would look like before she bothered to spend a bunch of time with her ink and her paints.

Here is her sketch.

Once she finished the sketch, she had a pretty good idea of what she wanted the actual painting to look like. So she used her sketch as a model as she did the actual painting, which looks like this.

You can see that the final painting looks a lot like the sketch, but that it’s much more detailed, and, of course, much more colorful.

Real artists use sketches as a way to make their art better. If you’re like me (and I’m definitely not a real artist), you might just sit down and draw something from scratch. There’s nothing wrong with doing it this way! But some time, if you’re curious, you might try to do a sketch first and then do a final version.

If you want to be like Robbi, that is. I certainly do.

Here she is doing a final painting for the next Bobbledy Book, Bobby and the Robots. When you get your copy, see if you can find the drawing below.