Nearly half of these drawings were completed during a residency at the MacDowell Colony in Peterborough, New Hampshire, in August 2018. During my stay there, the artist’s colony hosted its annual Medal Day, in which an artist is recognized for a lifetime of creative achievement (that year’s honoree was comics legend Art Spiegelman). Part of the Medal Day tradition is to ask those in residence to open their studios to the public for several hours. This image is from one of a group of photos I took during my open studio. It depicts a boy named Jacob, who dropped by with his family and, I was delighted to learn, was a fan of drawing as well. Here, he checks out my setup, which incorporated a magnifying glass—a tool much more essential for 55-year-old eyes.