Quote 34
The grown-ups’ response, this time, was to advise me to lay aside my drawings of boa constrictors, whether from the inside or the outside, and devote myself instead to geography, history, arithmetic and grammar. That is why, at the age of six, I gave up what might have been a magnificent career as a painter. (1.7)
It’s not enough to simply decide you want to do something, like become a great painter, and then stick with it. You also need encouragement and backing up, for starters. When the narrator was a little kid, all the grown-ups he knew told him that he wasn’t good at drawing and that his pictures didn’t represent what he thought they represented. This was enough to make the narrator give up on art, when he could have been “magnificent” if only he’d stuck with it.
Quote 35
When a mystery is too overpowering, one dare not disobey. Absurd as it might seem to me, a thousand miles from any human habitation and in danger of death, I took out of my pocket a sheet of paper and my fountain-pen. But then I remembered how my studies had been concentrated on geography, history, arithmetic and grammar, and I told the little chap (a little crossly, too) that I did not know how to draw. (2.12)
The narrator is ready to give up on drawing before he even starts, practically. As a grown-up himself, not having had enough of the proper encouragement when he was young, he left behind his creative instinct and imaginative style.
Now it would be a lot harder for him to make something like his Drawing Number One than it was before. For example, he can barely draw a correct sheep and ends up drawing a box instead. But, because the prince is so persuasive and has such a strong personality, this new friend persuades the narrator to keep trying to draw anyway.
Quote 36
Perhaps you will ask me, “Why there are no other drawings in this book as magnificent and impressive as this drawing of the baobabs?”
The reply is simple. I have tried. But with the others I have not been successful. When I made the drawing of the baobabs I was carried beyond myself by the inspiring force of urgent necessity. (5.20-1)
In this passage the narrator explains just how much he has kept on going. He “ha[s] tried” again and again to make all his drawings “magnificent and impressive,” but the one that has the most of these characteristics is the drawing of the baobabs. The reason the narrator thinks this drawing is more snazzy than the others is because of the subject. The baobabs themselves are so significant that the drawing reflects their significance.