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.
It would be so worth it to take a crash course on operating these earth movers. Playing in the mud and dirt on a grand scale. Truth be told, I never learn anything quickly, so a crash would probably mean I crash those behemoths.
In the above sketch, the earth mover on the right has pontoons which help it float.
Drawn with a number of different fountain pens and Pitt Artist Pens.
Went to North Pond late this afternoon to check on the Renovation Project and saw the dredger with pontoons setting partially in the pond and evidence of deep tracks in the muddy banks. Had my subject so got a choice seat in the shade. I was pretty much finishing up the drawing with some background and final touches on the mud troughs in the foreground when I heard someone approach behind me making a call of sorts. I glanced backwards and dude with a backpack on a bike was lookin’ out over the pond. Out on the pond a swarm of Canada Goose paddled in my direction.
“Hey BUDDY!! You’re in their way”, sez the huffy fellow on the bike, whom I had seen throwing some sort of feed at them before.
I knew they had plenty of space to pass to my left, and thought I’d rather like having them troop past. Plus with the late afternoon light rapidly changing was intent on finishing up. He gruffly urged me to move, I insisted he had other places along the bank to call ‘em up so I informed him I was fine where I was. As the geese waddled by he called me a name. Yes, I called him a couple two-three in return, suggested an act he could perform solo and returned to finish my drawing.
I promise I’ll be more agreeable next time.
Fountain pen and Pitt Artist Pens on a Stillman & Birn Nova series Beige sketchbook.
Two gorgeous days, perfect to draw out in the park. So yesterday I headed out to draw more of the renovations at North Pond. That was my intention until I came across the quirky sculpture by Robbie Barber next to the Lincoln Park Recreational Center. An old shell of a mobile camper/trailer mounted on a rusty outsized wheel rims. Channeling Claus Oldenburg a smidg, this very American, iconic mash up, part Conestoga wagon, part baby carriage on steroids glued me to the grass and out came the sketchbook. I started laying out the basic structure a bit after 3pm. At that point the trailer shell was partially in the sun with the raking light casting zebra shadows on the side. But with the sun moving quickly the whole piece wound up in the full shade of the building behind me. Not what I’d hoped to capture. So I worked on the wheels, background & grass and decided the drawing would be finished at roughly the same time today.
Today I headed out to complete the drawing and arrived at the perfect time. Okay, next up, I figured I head over to North Pond as planned the previous day. Well, en route to said pond, I spied the magnificent Eli Bates fountain by Augustus Saint-Gaudens of boys with scaly fin tipped fish legs (merboys?) wrestling with fish. The light was good, I was game and thus out came the sketchbook and pens.
Fountain pen & Pitt Artist Pens on a Rhodia notebook.
