How Tom Kinkade and I Wrote a Book on Sketching

Before he was the Painter of Light, and before I was the creator of Dinotopia, Tom Kinkade and I were two unknown and penniless art students.

We had grown weary of sitting in windowless classrooms enduring lectures about art theory. We hatched an audacious plan to drop out of school for a while, hop on a freight train, and discover America.

Our goal was to document everything in our sketchbooks. Our heroes were Lewis and Clark, John Steinbeck, and Jack Kerouac. My mother was so terrified of the fate that might befall me (her brother was killed by a freight train) that she took out a life insurance policy on me.