Buttnekkiddoodles

After Florida, I flew to Los Angeles, Pasadena to be specific. A community that has seen the return of some of it’s former luster. I stayed just a couple blocks from the main drag, Colorado Blvd., which sports some very tony clothiers and boutiques. I scoured the stores looking for a pair of rugged shorts as I was looking to do some rafting and possible white water once I got to Oregon, plus it was 88 freakin’ degrees. The stores had already switched to their Fall/Winter lines, it was on the eve of Halloween. Nothing to be found but long pants, sweaters, wool cardigans, leather jackets, and Empire coats. Couldn’t risk an epidemic of pneumonia sweeping thru poorly clad Los Angelinos.

 

Formerly a grand hotel and now a la-di-da condo, Castle Green presented the challenge of trying to define architectural structure swarmed by various plant shapes, (the leaf clusters of hedges were easy compared to the 10 thousand swords of palm fronds), while capturing the ever shifting play of light and shadow and the changing hues of green. I threw in the towel before finishing a number of palm trees. Several people stopped to have a look, some of them making comments, but perhaps most interesting were 2  denizens of street life, both by all appearances homeless, who engaged in brief conversations with me about the drawing.

 

  

Some grease pencil, otherwise Pitt Artist Pens.

              

Sorry to have neglected the website for so long, but now that I’m back from a 2 month road trip, I will put forth a flurry of sketches from across the country. You can see drawings from that trip if you go to: doncolleyroadtrip.tumbler.com. Drawn in an old doctor’s ledger book from 1937 and in a Utrecht toned sketchbook with Pitt Artist Pens and my old pal, the white China marker, aka the grease pencil. Cheers, Darn

Labor Day finds me again at the Palette & Chisel for their 12 hour Life Drawing Marathon. I had an OK day but kept screwing up otherwise decent efforts by shrinking certain limbs and letting proportions go all blooey. When I don’t have a gob of time I prefer to draw intuitively rather than set a drawing up with a slew of measured lines and blocking in masses. Plus on this pose, someone kept getting in my way and I got lazy with the figures left arm so the lower arm isn’t quite long enough.

      

Drawn with the usual suspects. Pitt Pens, grease pencil, Visconti Rembrandt fountain pen gassed up with Platinum Carbon, in Utrecht toned sketch book and ledger book.

 

Back in the grandeur of the Northwest and glorious Seattle. A town whose weather has never put me off.

Spent a glorious day by the Cedar River just 50 yards from an old train tressel that spans the river to the right. But a couple hours of drawing burnt the bejeezus outta my neck.

   

  

   Great time on the West coast, 2 cities, Portland & Seattle that I really like. Warts & All. And just so you know…that 4 hour delay was on UNITED.

Had to head back to the Northeast for demos in Portland, Salem and Seattle while it was very hot in Chicago. Lucked into spectacular weather on the West coast.

I had the first day in Portland to just run around so, I met up with Gail Vines and Bill Sharp and drew in Jameson Park for about 2 hours. It’s a beautiful inner city, block size park with a nice sloping and shaded grass lawn, and a water park with the stacked block sculpture you see in the full sun. It was teeming with way more kids and adults than I cared to draw. My work schedule was packed and that was the longest period I would enjoy to just sit and work on one drawing.

 

Hit the town one night and wound up in a club called Dirty where I made a poor attempt to capture some of the goings on in th pretty frenetic environment. Caught a quick silhouette of a patron enjoying one of 2 swings suspended directly over the bar. If you didn’t get stabbed in the ear with a stiletto heel, you might be lucky enough to catch some pocket change in yer martini. Made it over to Hipbone Studios east of the river for some late night nude sketching.

 

The drawing below began with a sketch made of a friend’s kid on the beach at Sawyer, Michigan, and developed over a couple of nights as I stood outside the John Helmon Haberdasher in downtown Portland.