Category: Art

This was a lovely drawing experience. At about 7:15 this morning, I strolled to the park with my dogs  and a snifter of iced coffee,  sketchbook under my arm . The heat had not yet risen, the birds and squirrels were at play, and the homeless guys were still asleep on the lawn. I sat on a bench by the playground to draw the old dead tree that seems to have been left by the grounds crew because it is so picturesque.

I drew with the usual Lamy Safaris, alternating back and forth between bold and thin, while my hounds bayed at big dogs lumbering by. After half an hour of drawing, I came home, made my breakfast, and added some sum-i ink tone and a few droplets of watercolor that was dried up in one of the cups of my palette.

It reminds me of the feeling of one of my favorite illustrators, Ernest Shepard.

Oh, and I saw the pair of Red-Tailed Hawks and their fledglings all together in the Park today. Very dramatic to see them swoop about.

One of them insisted on sitting in a mud puddle on the lawn for a very long time. I hope it’s okay.

Obviously I couldn’t do this drawing before breakfast. In fact I couldn’t do it at all. My dinner turned out to be a bacchanalia with friends at a fantastic restaurant so instead I have regurgitated a dinner I made earlier. I drew this on very soft paper (Strathmore Aquarius) in a book made for me by Roz and it has a tendency to suck up guache and give it a certain dustiness that’s quite appealing.

This challenge seemed like a good reason to look back at a film I made a few years ago:

I was initially a little hampered by the fact that I just drew my hand, or at least my forearm, in Challenge # 8 a couple of days ago and wanted to do something different. My colored pencils have been gathering dust so I brought them out for this challenge. A few years ago, I spend a month or two filling a book just with colored pencil drawings but never really loved the experience. As you can see, I tend to cross hatch rather than blend with them so I decided that I might as well be using ink which is brighter and tighter.

While I was drawing, I kept thinking about a book I loved as a teenager and, once the Shrek version was done, I hauled it out: Burne Hogarth’s Dynamic Anatomy. Hogarth, who was an art teacher (he helped found the School of Visual Arts)  but also worked on Tarzan comics, had an extraordinary style and his knowledge of anatomy is infectious. It’s worth spending time at his website.

My visit to Dynamic Anatomy inspired me to copy one of Hogarth’s drawings and think about everything that goes on beyond the surface. Look at that cobra-like thumb!

I have spent the last six months or so working on retooling various parts of my apartment, most notably my study. I have spent a lot of time sorting art supplies into little boxes and baskets and things.  It’s very exciting to my anal self to have a neatly pigeonholed studio, with clean surfaces where I can leave half-finished projects an dt have to clean everything u each time I finish for the day. I still have to do some work on the lighting and continue to clear out some clutter, but it’s all very satisfying and a long-term goal and fantasy.

Anyway, this morning, I managed to knock out a drawing with the Safari, and then cracked open my neat wooden box of Doc Martin’s and got busy painting. The whole thing took about 20 minutes or so and I got to work a half hour early. It’s  great feeling to have made something, day after day, before breakfast.

Today’s  EDM Challenge was a collaborative event. I was sitting around with Jack, my niece Morgan (who just got her Master’s degree in disability studies from Ohio State last month), and her friend Julie who was visiting from Philadelphia. I insisted that they join me in drawing a bottle of bourbon from my brother-in-law’s liquor cabinet. While I brandished my Lamy Safari, the young ‘uns selected from a jam jar full of Sharpies.

The girls grumbled a fair amount about their results but I think they’re terrific. It’s so interesting to see how different eye and fingers record the world around us.  When we were done, we drained the bottle — which made things look even more different.