Buttnekkiddoodles

Went out a couple days ago and made an attempt to capture one of the bridges over the North Shore Channel in Evanston. I love this simple scene and the frozen surface of the channel in the low light. Nor sure what the daredevil graffiti crew were trying to declare here but I did my best to be faithful to their temporal effort. Well, I roughed in the whole scene and was trying to get some of the woods and general feel of the concrete walls as my fingers were slowly going numb. I think I lasted 15, maybe 20 minutes and then snapped a pic and left, because…., well, because I’m a sissy. Came home and finished the drawing with a cup of hot cocoa at hand. #fabercastell Pitt Artist Pens and fountain pen on #clairefontaine Goldline Watercolour sketchbook.

 
Continuing a craft she learned thru her mom, Rosanna, Giamila has been running a serious ‘Knitting Fever’. This last year has been super stressful and  the craft of knitting appears to be of great value in managing anxiety. I bear the fruits of Giamila’s psychologically beneficial handiwork. A scarf, a zip up cardigan, woolen fingerless mittens, a ski cap and a second Wool cardigan sweater.

 

 
just sitting at home, reading the day to day graphic charts of pandemic deaths, economic misery, job losses,  and the political tug-of-war over how to manage either the response or the spin of the grim facts, and feeling shut in, cut off, not to mention even if you are holding on to a job the adjustment to the new bureaucratic methodologies and their technical learning curves and snafus is a campaign of emotional attrition. The simple, ‘do something’ zen of making something useful, something beautiful, for a loved one, is a grounding, positive activity with visible benefits to one’s sanity. I then wear this garment of love. A cloak against the feeling of separation or hopelessness.

Late night and wearing the first sweater Giamila knit for me as well as woolen house slippers and cotton skull cap knit for me by her mother Rosanna. Drawn with fountain pens and Faber-Castell Pitt Artist Pens on a Stillman & Birn Gamma Series sketchbook.

 

several years ago I visited Portland and went to a really pleasant park in the Pearl District of inner city. Loads of people were enjoying the sunny weather and a couple artist friends of mine and I decided to draw folks in the gracious surroundings. There were lots of moms out with their tykes and so I set up to sketch the view just behind one particularly relaxed group that looked really settled in.

Since then, I’ve reviewed this drawing many times having brought it along for many of my demonstrations and classes. Within is a figure of a young woman with a nifty hat that has become rather iconic to me. So I worked up a page of studies of her and how her limbs and muscles behaved in a posture that was both relaxed while requiring the ability to brace herself comfortably. I had my girlfriend pose and I looked at photos of me, shirtless, holding the same pose.
 
you can see relative to the woman next to her, that as her arms support the weight of her torso allowing her spine to curve as if resting against the back of a chair, her shoulders are pushed up, closer to her ears. This lets her head, which weights in the realm of 15 lbs, hang out over her clavicles with her chin just above her sternum. As for the muscles of her back, while they are elongated to follow the arc of her spine, (as shown in the following scan) they are also gathered as the shoulder force compression of her shoulder blades and the trapezius which forms the squeezed diamond shape from her neck to the crest of her shoulders and down to the middle of her back creating a furrow atop her spine.
 
To me, this was a useful exercise to help understand substructure and be mindful of how the body adjust to accommodate its own mass and the way in which some muscles contract while others simultaneously relax. You also become more explicitly aware of the elasticity of the body, at least youthful or limber physiques and the way it shifts to maintain balance against the forces of gravity. A person’s condition also determines what you can “read“ beneath the skin. If you are trying to compose figures from your imagination, studies like these give you loads of valuable info that help you make informed sketches and give your conceptualized drawings naturalism that have suitable proportions,  graceful flow and appear weight bearing, with the defining sub structures in credible locations.

 
These final 2 close ups also show how I like to use directional hatching or mark making in places to help describe the curvature of volume. Known as cross contour drawing, you can see me making use of it on the muscles of the left figure’s back, just as I have done on the marks on the right figure’s hat and pants.

Drawn with Faber-Castell Pitt Artist Pens and two fountain pens, the F-C Grip and the F-C Essentio Black Leather, both with Broad nibs on a Clairefontaine Goldline Watercolour sketchbook.