Tagged: ledger book

 

I’ll admit some of my pages are quite the train wrecks. To wit: the first scan.
To those of you who’ve borne witness to my sketchbooks and been surprised to see the spectrum run from chicken scratching to clusterf@kkery, allow me to explain.
There are times when describing how I begin or develop a drawing to another artist, or student, the sketchbook is my podium, and I jot down my thought process right there, on the spot, in full view of another’s retinas. Not wanting to be ‘long winded’ as it were, (I realize, THAT runs against expectation), the doodles are pretty much whipped out and at times very much short of grace.
The 2nd and 3rd images are minimal, yet clear enough to get the point with the sketch in blue ink on yellow ledger paper showing the progression of a bent over figure, derived from a modeling friend on the left to the imagined scenario of a fight on the right.
 
 
After that we see a very cursory sketch of four people in green about a table with indication of an implied horizon line for POV. Pretty quick and loose in light green with follow up line work in black to give a tad more clarity, as in,”Okay, there you have it. Now y’all get started and let’s see where you take that in 30 minutes”.

Next up….uh oh, it appears Don not only displayed how to do a loose layout in a light Umber color followed up by dropping black marks on top to strengthen form and pull near features out of the background, but perhaps a touch of impatience also, eh?

Two more images show our pedagogue starting to use the same page for multiple lessons. Hang on tight, this could get confusing.
 
Now we come to a diagrammatic sketch of a bush. That’s more like it. Focused, with sufficient development to explain the incorporation of simplified geometry, developing form by building values, awareness of light source, and enriching surfaces with varied textures.

And after that…oh dear, he’s back at it, certainly demonstrating some of his trickier palm print for leather techniques, but those moire hatching patterns could mean our boy is adrift on one of his tangents again.

Thank goodness he’s returned to a simple  linear layout of a house, I guess, and some kind of…like…machine-ishy gizmo whatchamacallit. We’ll like the text says, I guess you had to be there.

Now the blue panorama of the cemetery should be as self evident as the kid can get. Start light and general, work towards the specifics and develop the values. This was actually done, on site, for the benefit of a class. But you’d have to poll the class to get second opinions about the benefits passed along.
So the six sketches that follow demonstrate one thing in particular. That I loathe wasting good paper. The question of the merits of any given drawing here being set aside for the moment, I often go back into my demo pages, especially the minimally developed and sketchier ones and start to reuse, or repurpose, or transform, or crowd ‘em up. Especially if I’m on a bus and I’m frantically flipping thru the book to find the space to drop in a passenger’s head. Like the bearded dude’s noggin.
It can get pretty disjunct.


Occasionally, I’ll drop a drawing on top of some sketches that were minimal or light enuff that any early meanderings got incorporated into the whole with little evidence of pentimento, or prior being. Kinda the way I feel about reincarnation. With all the new input and distractions and constant jazz and extrapolating forays, how are you ever gonna recognize your way back to your old self.
Hunh?????
Mmmm, last up is a page that seemed to have begun one journey, jumped track, and rode away on an obsessive tangent.
 
 
Drawn with various medium such as fountain pens using Platinum Carbon Ink, DeAtramentis Document Black and Brown Ink, Faber-Castell Pitt Artist Pens, Polychromos Color Pencils, Gouache, and White Grease Pencils on ledgerbooks, and Clairefontaine notebooks, Goldline Watercolour sketchbooks, Stillman & Birn Nova Series sketchbooks.

Cali Zephyr

Passengers on the Fall Trek. Above, a very nice gentleman gets his first look at the Rockies.

image image image image image image image

Amtrak, Metra, CTA, Megabus, Trailways, Uber….as long as my hands aren’t glued to a steering wheel, I’ll make my way around the country and fill my sketchbooks. Fountain pens, juiced up with Platinum Carbon, Pitt Artist Pens, grease pencils, aka the white China markers, ballpoint, the rare color pencil, gel pens, whatever, in ledger books, watercolor pads, Stillman & Birn, Strathmore, Clairefontaine, Tomoe River Paper and then some. Drawing from life, from nudes, landscapes, urban environments, transit passengers, dead animals, cemeteries, laundromats, drawing out of my head and out of my mind….just answering the calling and feeding the obsession.

Oxbow photo-527 photo-529

Swung into California, SFO to be specific, and headed by bus to Napa catching the young fellow above napping en route. He later awoke to see me drawing and commented favorably on my drawing. Owner of a landscaping business and a super nice dude. Glorious weather, and made a culinary discovery that could turn things around for many friends of mine who dislike raw oysters. Grill ’em! Came upon them at Hog Island Oyster Company in the Oxbow Public Market.

Napa across from Flax SF

Pasadena City Hall Little Dancer

Gear used: grease pencil, Pelikan M215 (which I have since lost), Pitt Artist Pens, other fountain pens, ledger book, Moleskine watercolor sketchbook. The value of pens lost on the road is getting to pile up. I might be nearing $2,000 just in lost fountain pens. The drawing of Degas’ Little Dancer was done in the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena.

Gary Torres  Steve Saitzyk Amara

And yes, that cup of chocolate was decadent and nearly thick as pudding.

 

roadside marker

Ah, the glorious Northwest. I can’t go there often enough. This last trip took me to Seattle by air, flew to Bozeman, then by car to Missoula, Spokane, Pullman and back to Spokane. And finally, after hearing so much about the Palouse I went into the heart of that great agrarian region. Reached the Palouse just after the combines had harvested the wheat and lentil crops and had begun the flash burn and plowing under the fields.

Hotel Montvale in the heart of the Palouse Christian Jewel Divine mime A Mime B Monroe bridge  Denver airport Moody's  litho study b litho study 2

 

Back in Chicago working on a litho at Anchor Graphics Studio before heading out to California. Jumping back and forth between ledger books, a Moleskine watercolor sketchbook and toned paper sketchbooks by Utrecht and Strathmore. No surprises with the tools I’m using, Pitt Pens, grease pencils, fountain pens. On the road I made big use of my Pelikan M215, broad nib, rich f and Pelikano Juniors but for the brief time I’m home I’m working the Graf von Faber Guilloche Chevron broad point. Platinum Carbon ink and Noodler’s Ottoman Blue. Since I draw with my fingers as well I notice the Noodler’s and many water soluble fountain pen inks really stain the skin more tenaciously than Pitt Pen ink or even Platinum Carbon. Not totally sure what this means in the long run but…the older I get, the less I’ll sweat that.

double snooze photo-496 photo-498 photo-501 photo-499 photo-500 photo-503 photo-505 photo-508 photo-510 photo-509 photo-506 photo-507 photo-502 photo-497

I have a solo show at Rockford College opening this Thursday, Feb. 2nd. The above image is just a section of a 7′ x 20′ composite/collaged wall piece comprised of individual pages from various sketchbooks over the last 28 years. Molly Carter is the director/curator of the gallery, helped me put up this wall piece and did a super job with some help from artist/printmaker/uber mench Dave Menard installing the rest of the show.

 

These drawings are on every kind of paper, vellum, ledger, bristol, onion skin, recycled, and drawn with ball point, gel, India ink, gouache, water color, Pitt Artist Pens, felt pens, Sharpies, colored pencils, fountain pen inks such as Noodler’s, Iroshizuku, Calli, Diamine, Platinum Carbon,  also grease pencil, (aka- China marker), Tom Bow, Daler Rowney F.W. acrylic inks, Staedler, and probably a few other pens no longer in production.

   

 

 

  • Categories

  • Archives

  • Tags

  • blog links