Buttnekkiddoodles

I’ve lived in Chicago, and called it home for 15 years. I dig the city. Aside from the extreme flatness, I’ve found it to be very engaging. From the tremendously expansive skies, the magnificence of the lake it builds up to, it’s architectural significance, the food, the people, and even the weather. I stay pretty engage here. It has considerable extremes, big disparity in income and opportunities. The weather, not it’s biggest selling point, can be oppressively hot and stifling then shatteringly frigid. It’s a city that I’ve described as grand but not pretty. Large tracts of it could be said to be blunt. And wealth is evident. No surprise, city amenities and services follow the bucks. It was a big blue collar town but it has been developing more and more to the needs and nods of a white collar work force. The areas of this city that don’t have deep pockets can be quite brutal. In the 15 years I’ve lived here, and the 6 years prior to that during which I would come and visit my friend Tony Fitzpatrick, the city has seen very evident changes, not just in the profile and elevation of the city’s skyline, but in the taming of several rugged neighborhoods. A process some refer to as gentrification.

I will say that the previous administration made real effort to glamorize the urban experience in parts. And while in the minds of many, mine included, the previous mayor may have had a fondness for arboreal development, large floral planters along some of the boulevards, rooftop gardens and showy park improvements, he went out a cad for a truly miserable and suspect privatization of the city’s parking meters. His record on public schools was nothing to mention on a resume either. The dreadful misadventures of meters and schools aside, the city has some neighborhoods with real gracious amenities. And some sections of the city enjoy being extremely engaging and beautiful urban habitats. Might even call some areas pretty at long last. The campus of Loyola in Rogers Park has seen a remarkable turnaround from one of the country’s bleakest campuses to a thoughtful and more bucolic public space that takes full advantage of it’s choice lakeside plot.

     

Continuing to make extensive use of white on toned paper, be it the Pitt Big Brush Pen or White China Marker, sometimes combining both. I like laying one or both down as a base over which I can add color to spike it’s luminosity and achieve a cleaner hue. I do wish I could get a starker black on the toned paper. It seems to me that it softens or dulls the pitch thru absorption and contrast perhaps. Fountain pens don’t produce as crisp an edge in these books either.

   

I was walking about downtown St. Paul with artist Ken Avidor and we happened upon a police crime scene 1 block from the hotel I was staying at. We both drew the event and you can see the witness still sitting in the transit kiosk.

After we finished, we went back to Ken’s place to post the drawings on an Urban Sketchers’ site. I left there near midnight and returned to the hotel I was staying at where I showed the night front desk clerk the sketch. Turns out, a fellow connected with the event had snuck into the lobby and was hiding in the lobby balcony. The night clerk could here him wheezing and panting and then told him he had to leave, to which the fellow responded he wasn’t going back out because, “they were going to kill me”.

Woke early and drew, from my hotel room window, the transit kiosk where the victim, who made it to the hospital ER alive, collapsed.

Top drawing done with fountain pen, and Pitt Artist Pens in Molskine watercolor notebook.

Middle drawing, fp, PAP, and Pitt Artist Pen white in a Strathmore toned sketchbook.

Bottom drawing, fp filled with Noodlers Ottoman Blue and PAPs in Moleskine.

Headed out to Garfield Park to meet up with a dozen artists from the Urban Sketchers Chicago crowd. Brought along a cluster of colored Pitt Pens but mostly went with the b/w monochrome. You’ll see evidence of fountain pen there as well (Visconti Rembrandt w/ Platinum Carbon ink).

Glad to see him go, but I’m sure there will be more of the same.

So as our little Pope strolls into the amber light, we wait excitedly to see the fashion distinctions of the next Hoy See. Drawn with reverence in a used Boorum & Pease Co.  ledger book from 1980 with Faber-Castell Pitt Artist Pens.

Labored over an illustrating gig, got back in court to sketch at a murder trial, and drawing out and about both solo and with friends. No change in materials though the smaller drawings are in a Pentalic book w/ unlined, ivory colored paper. Has some bleed thru traits so I probably won’t use one of these again once I finish with it. Not being able to draw on both sides checks the number of spreads I’ll do and means I don’t get full use out of one. I do like how they’re bound and the cover’s nice but they have a touch too deep of a gutter. Fountain pen inks wanna seep thru the page. The drawings on toned paper, which I favor when drawing in court, are in a Utrecht sketchbook.

 

The fellow in the green shirt, a witness at a murder trial, the guy who discovered the body of the victim, was getting a rough going over from the defense attorney.

 

Threw in some life drawings from the old haunt, the Palette & Chisel, from Feb & Jan. Heading off to Texas later this month while I’ll try to run down some life drawing venues there, not to mention some of that awesome central Texas BBQ. Maybe I can find some bar-b-que slathered nudes to draw while I’m at it.

    

Oh and uhm, here’s a recent sketch for an illustration job I just finished just to show folks I do, once in a blue moon, pick up a pencil and noodle around with them.