Buttnekkiddoodles

I’m chained to the drawing board with an illustration job, hence not much drawing from out and about the town. So……..I thought I’d post drawings from sketchbooks past. Some of the drawings go back 30 years. The sketch books usually have titles, you’ll see that plus the dates they were done when you put the cursor over the image.

This is about the time I was playing around with fountain pens. Just little affordable Sheaffers, since I had ruined a Pelikan by putting the wrong ink in the reservoir. This was the late 80’s early 90′, and about that time I discovered brush pens and got very excited about those. I initially used Tom Bow and Staedtler but was never happy about the inks not being waterproof. After a several pages got ruined from a water spill I started pulling ’em apart and filling ’em with Higgins, or Pelikan, or FW acrylic inks, or special inks Robert Doak in Brooklyn made for me.

So there’s a bit of drawing from life, drawing from references and just drawing straight out of my head which I haven’t done so much of over the lest couple of years. That I hope to return to in greater measure this fall.

I sat on the back porch and knocked out this 2 page drawing of some of the most turbulent skies I’ve seen over Chicago. Those little blue grey buildings just visible above the trees on the left page are the tallest buildings in Chicago. The tallest being the Willis Tower (formerly the Sears Tower) some 6 miles from my apartment.

Even though I thing Lake Michigan is magnificent, I rarely draw it. But the day of the 4th of July was hot and brilliant so I strode out and parked my ass on the Hollywood beach jetty and banged out a sketch of some beach revelers just in time to avoid a really nasty sunburn.

Happy Birthday….

The 2 drawings to the left were done at The Press Club wine bars in SF.

James and Tilly Rex were 2 performer/juggleros/acrobatiste/clowns at the trade show in Berkeley who graciously agreed to pose for me. Tilly’s giggling made it difficult for her to keep poking her tongue at me. The small landscape was done at the conclusion of a walk around the perimeter of the Cesar Chavez Park, a nature preserve built on landfill that sits next to the Berkeley Marina. From top of the park’s hill you can see Alameda, the Bay Bridge, San Francisco, the Golden Gate Bridge, Alcatraz, the southern tip of Marin County, Tiburon, Port Richmond, Albany, the UC Berkeley Tower and the hills beyond. Being a lazy landscapist, I picked a simple view of the north wing of the Hotel, a wall of trees, and a grassy slope. It does serve a purpose as the ariel view from Google earth makes it look flat and relatively uninteresting. I think it’s a nifty little spot from which you get a lung filling sense of the bay.

Weather in San Francisco was spectacular. Dolores Park was teeming with folks. Intended on drawing the gleaming dome of the church but time and people watching robbed me of the opportunity to do a color study of it.

Strange stuff, this blue ledger paper. I’ll have to use acrylic ink/paint because white grease pencils don’t seem to have much presence on it.

Drawings from the beginning of June.

The page to the left is from an art materials trade show in Berkeley, California, from which I just returned.