Shot out to the Big Apple where I took in a little action at Belmont race track. Pretty slim crowd. But enjoyed hanging with Rob & Barney-G. We dined on deli take out, whitefish salad out by the paddocks.
Following 3 drawings done in Chicago just before heading off to NYC & Portland, Oregon.
  
 
 View of Edgewater and downtown sky scrappers from my back porch during a neighborhood blackout.
Heading out from O’Hare, did the above sweep of the boarding area. I seldom seem to settle into these air terminal transit drawings.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
While I was drawing the statue of Theodore Roosevelt in front of the Portland Museum of Art, I heard a scuffle develop behind me and turned in time to see 3 men tumble to the pavement. A couple of cops had just taken down the man depicted above in light pans and racing striped jacket. Cops came flooding into the area and grabbed and cuffed another fellow from a nearby bench.
 
 
The above drawing is a clear example of why I invest a little more in some drawings. The multiple light sources was so compelling and challenging and made the drawing more specific to character, time of day, mood, and an effect some landscape architects might call “light pollution”.
 
 
 
 
Life drawings from the Palette & Chisel 12 hour life drawing marathon.
Drawings done in Utrecht & Strathmore toned paper sketchbooks, Moleskine watercolor pad, with Pitt Artist Pens, Pelikan M215 & Visconti Rembrandt fountain pens using Platinum Carbon ink, and White China marker grease pencil.
Cindi Ettinger. Master printer for 30 years, at her studio in Philadelphia.
 
 
 
 
 
 
Two of the better portraits I got during transit drawing on SEPTA regional rail.
2
 
Got back to Philly for a week and took care of some business while visiting with very dear friends and dining on some excellent food. From the time I first set foot in Philadelphia in 1981, my tastebuds have been treated in the best way possible. That continues on every trip back to Penn & Ben’s town. This trip included a trek to Roxborough plateau where my buddy Dave gave me a sample of honey direct from the hive. A gorgeous day and beautiful morning light let me sit comfortably before the hives and sketch in Pitt Pen and fountain pen a few of his stacks. Brought along just the black and greys for this trip. Made use of my Visconti Rembrandt, Pelikano Jr., Sailor Calligraphy, Pelikan M 215, and Faber-Castell Ambition fountain pens.
Stuart holding Mr. Billy, who loves to play tirelessly, but doesn’t care too much to be held.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
My father had been a very active and physically imposing man before marrying at age 30 and settling into a routine of child rearing, and long days behind a desk. Not one to complain much, he did admit to me when he was in his late 50’s and way over weight, that he hated his sedentary lifestyle. I am now in my late 50’s and have found myself years from any type of physically vigorous activity. Â I spend scads of hours each week sitting in cafes, on trains and buses, in parks and libraries and any number of public spaces drawing throngs of folks who are working on their spreads. Gyms have cropped up over the years and I now am about to break down and join one because I just don’t seem to incorporate a vigorous lifestyle with my practice of sitting about noodling in notebooks. Chicago has garnered a reputation as a city sporting one of this country’s most overweight populations. My friends in San Francisco walk all over that city, and often, and having joined them, I can attest to the demands of those hills. And though I do hike about this town a bit, the pancake terrain never seems to really put me through the gears.
I spend loads of hours each week drawing and many hours on a computer have continually inched up to the point where I’m seriously looking to raise my tables and work stations so I at least stand while drawing and working at the computer. I keep looking to see what it is I’m documenting with all the urban sketching that I do. Certainly I capture many, many people who are simultaneously connected while disconnected through the obsession of keeping tabs with their computers. I also see lots of consuming while hanging about. Guilty myself there. Since moving to Chicago, I have logged thousands of hours in cafes where I not only draw but where I made use of the available newspapers to get my news because I have such an aversion to just sitting on my ass at home and watching t.v. And during those months of Sundays spent in cafes I have washed down a congo line of wheel barrels filled with donuts, cinnamon buns, almond croissants, chocolate covered graham crackers, carrot cake, chocolate chess pies, chocolate cream pies, apple pies, coffee cake, chocolate cookies, shortbread cookies, peanut butter cookies, blueberry muffins, banana nut muffins, ( there hasn’t been a baked food item made that my tonsils haven’t wanted to meet) with a a tsunami of hot chocolate, mocha lattes, iced cappuccinos, way too many of them dolled up with bouffants of whipped cream. As much as I’ve been witness to flock behavior, I’ve borne witness and documented my lard ass life style. Now the internet has brought much to me in the way of information and imagery, as well as helping me keep touch with a network of friends scattered all over this hemisphere. One such person, who could been a virtual denizen of the matrix for all I know asI haven’t actually met him yet, is the fine artist Clive Powsey, whose life is anything but sedentary. Often when he paints and draws, he is standing to do so have sometimes hauled an easel out to capture part of the majestic Northwest where he lives. Many times each year he treks into the Canadian wilds to scale mountains. I’m finally looking to get the lead out and follow the healthier examples being set by some of my friends.
How do I get more time away from the damned computer though. At least while out drawing in public, I felt like I was one who had lifted his chin and was taking stock of what was around him. When I get home I bear more than a little likeness to the junkie in how I glide willingly or otherwise to the nouveau boob tube. Given the amount of porn on the internet it’s even more of an appropriate moniker. Having skipped the t.v. for a great many years, never watched “Happy Days,” “Laverne and Shirley”, “Magnum P.I.”,”Jersey Shore”, “The Wheel of Fortune”, “WKRP in Cincinnati”, “Fraser”, “30 something”, “Mork and Mindy”, “Housewives…”, “The Weakest Link”, “Cheers”, “2 and 1 1/2 Men”, “Dynasty”, “Dallas”, “Six Feet Under”, “Family Ties”, “Lost”, “The Bachelor”, I do know that I’m somewhat culturally retarded. I did see an episode of the Sopranos and Seinfeld, and a few others just to get a sense of what I was missing but I just never took the bait. Not that some of them aren’t terrifically entertaining and some offer biting social commentary. It’s largely due to knowing I’m very visual with latent addictive tendencies and a teenage history of couch potatoism.
As a kid who lived in Turkey from the age of 12-14, I experienced a period of creative activity where I drew, built models, read stacks of books, and comics that later informed some of my drawing skills, and was out and about exploring the city with friends, finding no shortage of ways to direct  pent up energy. All because I wasn’t glued to the tube. And while I love going to movies, no commercials, larger scale and a more intense experience, it’s over after the feature and away you go. Plus it gets one out into the city to take in the event.. And I love the city. I like drawing as I’m out and about. It does many things for me to sketch while observing. It prolongs the act of looking and it slows me down to focus, much more so than the honey bee like flitting about from one thing to the next. Plus I’m getting more adept at drawing as I take in my surroundings. I got to be very impatient with watching sports on t.v. Especially if I had nothing invested in the game, i.e. were my alma mata  Longhorns of UT at war with a rival such as the Oklahoma Sooners? Even more so if it was professional sports. Here I was watching someone get good at what they did, plus make a ton of money, while I worked on the dent in my couch.
OK, so I have gotten better at a craft I very dearly love, and while I ain’t rich from it, it has put some food on the table. I guess you could say it has paid for some of the pastries and cocoa I’ve scarfed, but I lament that somehow, I’ve still managed to earn the fitness of a couch potato. Hence the halter monitor drawing of the previous post. You might ask, if I was to put myself in among my fellow citizens to document the way a significant portion of them spend their energies, was it necessary for me to blend in so much?
Portraiture is tuff enuff and admittedly, I struggle with catching a likeness of the subject at hand. Even when I pose someone, who can hold still, and I have loads of time, I just as often run right into the ditch. I find it amusing that given an unaware subject (save the nudes scattered throughout) who may fidget, and leave at any moment, I have just as much a chance of capturing something essential about that person as I might were I to set up ideal conditions for portraying that sitter  as others might recognize them. So here is a wall of attempts to see what’s recognizable from rear and oblique views, when the person gives me little to work with. Clothing and posture may at times hinder or help convey the personality of the subject.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
These sketches, done in public, often in transit, where drawn on a variety of papers – Utrecht and Cachet toned papers, Clairefontaine, and a preponderance of various ledger books. Michael Kalman has turned me onto the new series of sketchbooks by Stillman & Birn.  Drawn with a variety of inks from several fountain pen inks – Iroshizuku, Platinum Carbon, Noodler’s, Diamine,  Calli, to ballpoint (especially the Bic Bold 1.6mm, also like the Pilot Ageless), gel (Uniball Impact RT)  and rollerball pens. I make heavy use of  Pitt Artist Pens. The fountain pens I enjoy working with are – Pelikan 115, Pelikano Junior, Pelikan M205 Duo, Namiki Vanishing Point, Lamy Studio, Lamy Safari, Graf vov Faber Guilloche, Graf von Faber Classic, Faber-Castell Coconut Ambition. Occasionally I like using a bristle brush pen such as the Pentel and a couple made by Kuretake and Kaimei. Not to be forgotten is my darling little Ugly Duckling, the grease pencil.
