I went to court last Friday, August 19, to follow the R Kelly trial at the Everett Dirksen Federal Courthouse. Because of Covid restrictions they limited the number of spectators to 30. They also limited the number of courtroom artist to two. As in 2. WTF is that all bout? So, as I was number 33 in line I was directed to the overflow courtroom where video monitors were set up. The benches had blue painters tape ‘X’s on the benches to separate spectators. The monitors had split screen so the view of proceedings was further limited.
The video closed circuit of the proceedings was unlike the recent coverage of the Johnny Depp/Amber Heard trials or the trial of George Floyd’s murder, in that those trials had close ups of the witness giving testimony. This video showed half of the entire courtroom and as such, you were pretty much unable to tell who was who, who was speaking, and without any facial expressions.
Therefore I choose to cover the journalists and spectators viewing the case.
min court, spectators are advised to refrain from commentary, which could include gasps. Some were removed according to a journalist I spoke with. In the overflow room, there were no court officials and hence, commentary would percolate up from time to time. In fact, as spectators were still filing in, before the judge and jurors filed in, two women behind me got into a slightly heated exchange over their differing opinions. One wisely chose to move to the other side of the room.
it seems it’s a first come basis as to who will get in to court and I have to file for press credentials to be able to draw in courtroom where the proceedings actually take place. Until that all falls in place, I’ll have to sketch in the overflow room.
Pitt Artist Pens and fountain pen on mulberry paper.
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.
I’m not sure why I’m being limited to 6 images in this post, until I can get WordPress aminstration to explain the problem, you’ll have to go to my next post to finish this interupted post. 