Buttnekkiddoodles

Well, this may be helpful. I worked with videographer Hiromi Sogo to give y’all some sense of how I manage, or try, to sketch people who are not posing but rather engaged in some activity. This I do and have done, as those who follow me know, for more than four decades. This practice has helped me in many ways, but greatly in one in particular. When I had the chance to draw in court, I was already up-to-speed with capturing people in motion.

Here are close ups of the drawing used in the video: just a note, when transferring the video to this platform, some of the soundtrack drops out; a glit I look to correct and avoid in future videos. Learning curve stuff, my bad.

As mentioned in the video, I number the drawings in the order they were begun. To my eyes, there was a lot of “meat on the bone”, I.e. an interesting looking dude holding great poses about concentration, wearing a shiny, puffy jacket made more dramatic by the raking light that accentuated surface features with the cast shadows of near and mid distant structures. Drawing  multiple perspectives or postures on the same page makes the transition from one position to the next easier as the subject moves and/or returns to a similar posture allowing you to add or complete the drawing. Afterwards, it also makes for better side by side comparisons since you’re not flipping back and forth to compare and contrast drawings.

You can see the preliminary or searching sketch for which I used a light Flesh tone. That establishes the general silhouette and will be a place holder if the subject suddenly moves just after I’ve begun drawing. I managed to knock in a good deal of his face and hair but he moved before I could get to his hand. When he returned to this pose about 45 minutes later, my “notes” were in place and I was able to pick immediately where I’d left off.

Evident in these drawings ing s is my use of several tools, one very important amount them are my fingers as you can see the marks left by my fingerprints.

Those fingerprints create hatch marks that are quite distinct from the hatching created with a stylus be it pen or pencil. Varied marks have great appeal to me in that they can enrich the drawing and  their combined effect is to increase the descriptive nature of the marks. But another, very crucial reason I draw with an array of different tools is to take advantage of the inherent attributes of a given tool and by doing so save myself time. Most important in drawing a dynamic subject where you’ve no idea when your subject could move or altogether leave, is to draw efficiently. Why overwork a small nib when a big brush affords greater coverage. Fingerprints create multiple hatch marks simultaneously that are also very difficult to emulate with the stroke of a pen. An inky finger will come in handy if you should want a smudged tone. Add to this collective of mark making, a variety of hues and the drawing gains in richness and description. For the combined effect simply examine the close up below of figure #5.

Drawings were done done with a Faber-Castell Basic Black Leather fountain pen filled with DeAtramentis Document Black Ink and F-C Pitt Artist Pens on a Stillman and Birn Gamma Series sketchbook (S&B is now a subsidiary of Clairefontaine) which takes ink and pencil nicely and can handle watercolor, plus has a little pebbly surface that creates nice textures when smudging or scumbling.

I don’t know what to call it. An Epiphany, a Change of Heart, New Stratagems, I Fired the Old Coach, Regime Change. But, I’ve been thinking about sketching, doodling, if you will, quick sketching in particular. You know, warm up exercises, gesturals. Who doesn’t have the need to do ’em at least a few thousand times over the course of your life. Well I do reams of  ’em. The idea is to quickly and economically capture a pose, it’s balance, the gestural sweep and flow of a figure, don’t sweat the details…. Anyhow, I may have stated in an earlier post how one of the open sessions where I go draw from the figure, opens up the night with 45 minutes to an hour of  20 second poses, 40 second poses, then minute long to 2 minute poses. This is supposed to get us all good and loose. The drawings in the first row, column 1 and column 2, and the bottom row, column 1 are some examples of sub 2 minute doodles. The odd thing, for me, is, to get really effective quickies, I need to be already warmed up or relaxed and open to it. To capture something in 20 seconds you have to have a mission. What do I wanna say with these few seconds? Where’s the emphasis? People like to use terms like “essence”, “flow”, “sweep.” The spine is a good architectural structure and a simple description can go a long way to indicate the figures’ posture. The important relationships of head to shoulders to chest to pelvis to knees to feet… them seconds are flying by. You can hear people exhale as the timer goes off and the pose changes, only to switch again another 18-25 heartbeats later; depending on how much you want to rip out the page and send it flying in a balled up wad. And these poses are often really exciting, with some of the models displaying their intimidating athleticism. All that juicy information, those fabulous contours and the twisted body throwing form-draping shadows on itself. ZZZZZZZZ! Next pose. Dayumn! Sometimes I can barely get my head out of the last pose and I’m already halfway thru the next. There are nights when that frustration carries over into the longer poses and I never seem to find a groove. The grey seated figures in column 1 row 2 and the blue figures in column 1 row 5 are some clunkers that best illustrate what I’m talking about.  I take my everyday sketchbook, which is usually one of many beautiful old ledger books that go with me everywhere and contain transit doodles and head studies, notes about articles I read in various media, concepts for future pieces and studies and working drawings for current projects. I could just eat up scores of those gorgeous pages with an army of crappy scribbles. Hey, that’s the risk, I don’t fuckin’ like drawing on that shitty newsprint anymore. Later, for amusement and exercise I may go back to the more disappointing quickies and “doctor” ’em up. I’ve posted a number of those pages in the past. Refer to the guy in the barrel 1st row 2nd column and the “Hey Mutha-Fukka!” drawing 2nd row 1st column from the October 14th, 2009 post titled Good Days, Bad Days and you’ll see just such  amended drawings that began as 20 seconds of tangled pubic hairs. Other times I’m so disgusted with the way things are going that I’ll just layer my “warm-ups” on top of other embarrassing doodles. Take a look at the drawing above in the 2nd row of the 2nd column. Saves paper.

So…to wind my way to the point of this post. Would you go out cold on a field and start running wind sprints? When I was involved in athletics a few decades ago, we warmed up by gentle stretching and/or jogging around the track before we turned on the jets. Now, I’m a fellow who draws in public with great frequency. I spend 6-12 hours per week on public transit and a few more hours/week in cafes, where I take full advantage of drawing that and them which are around me. You’ve no idea how long someone is going to hold still, few do for any lenght of time. So I’m prepared to make haste when trying to capture a likeness or setting.  The drawings in column 2 row 3, column 3 row 3, column 2 row 5 were done in just such settings and I guarantee that some of those folks were squirming like they had ants in their pants. The studies in column 1 row 4 were done while watching a friend’s son working out in his karate class. I don’t care to have gesture drawings and quickies all boil down to  slashing mid-lines, boxed torsos, hemispheres with latitudes and longitudes, or snake tornadoes. And that’s part of the rub for me. Even when I’m moving quickly with the last grains of sand draining from the hourglass, I try to make note of light and shade and suggest volume.  It’s just where I’m at at this point. In the drawings I did from a balconey of the Windy City Roller Derby gals, column 2 row 7, I was moved by the uniforms, their equipment, posture, perspective, and the sheen on their hair and helmets.  In the few minutes when these women were taking a breather with all hell breakin’ loose before them, I wanted some of all that eye candy. Some studies from life are gratis the generousity of friends who pose for me as did Geza with his accordian in column 1 row 3 and Mark in the yellow page in column 3 row 4. I feel especially pressed to knock it out in a hurry but the whole point of their holding the pose in the first place is to help me with a figure I’m developing and how light hits those forms. In those instances, I use brush pens so I can work up linear and tonal areas as rapidly and fluidly as possible. I dispense with all those measuring lines and blocking in of forms and angles. I’m not looking to frame in a bloody house after all. My objective here is to draw as intuitvely and economically as possible given an empathetic concern for my friends’ creakin joints and quivering muscles. When I’m good and warmed up, this is more likely to yield useful results. On my way to life drawing sessions I’m trying to cop some time on the train drawing commuters to get the grease flowing. When I get into the studio where the models are darting about at a frantic pace from the get-go and I’m walking in cold having had no time to draw beforehand; the effect of an hours’ worth of speed drawing is to tighten me up. And that fuckin’ timer is the equivalent of Chinese water tourture.

There is a 4 hour session on Friday nites at the Palette and Chisel that begins with 2 half-hour poses wherein the model is fully clothed. You can choose to bang in your angles, catch a little likeness, render some shadows, and I find that the drapery of the clothes lets me play loose and breezy with some brushwork. After an hour, when the model disrobes and begins quick poses, I’m feeling a bit more settled in and have a sense of what’s working for me, or not. And if I had some fun on the train or at a cafe before I go straddle the bench at the P&C then I’m totally up for a half hour’s worth of 1 minute, 2 minute and 5 minute sprints. I also find as I look back thru my sketcbooks that those particular drawings have more snap. I can sense more trust in my line as well. On nights like those, I may start a drawing, as I did on colunm 1 row 6, and column 2 row 6, column 2 row 7, and column 3 row 7, with an exploratory line or 2 or circle in the head region, but, when the feeling’s there, you just say fuggit and lay the marks in with confidence.

Don demonstrates Faber-Castell pens as he draws on public transit. We also get to see him lick one of his drawings to prove its waterproof qualities. And check out those shorts!