Full disclosure, this sketch of a rusty metal bison sculpture outside the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum was begun at sunset, but wet shoes, cold toes, and a shortage of color drove this pampered art nerd indoors where he finished it from memory. #fabercastellusa Pitt Artist Pens on #clairefontaine Goldline Watercolour sketchbook. The after and before for your consideration.
A couple weeks ago my dear pal Alexandria and I felt a need for a visit in these isolating times, so, we each masked up and met for a 3 hour visit at Calvary Cemetery.
Calvary is a modest size cemetery which sits between Chicago and Evanston along the shore of Lake Michigan. It’s very open being flat and not forested with minimal trees and plantings. It is quite pleasant, very bright and enjoys the benefit of the lake’s breeze.
Alex and I brought chairs and I proceeded to sketch her as she surfed the net while we talked of how we were coping with the extraordinary times.
I worked on a Stillman & Birn Nova Series Beige sketchbook. The warm tinted Pages provide a great tonal base allowing a selective use of a brighter value by adding white as I did here with a Faber-Castell Pitt Artist Brush Pen. The page has just enough tooth that when I dragged or rubbed an inky finger across the surface I was able to emulate the surface and look of the tombstone behind Alex. Yes, those are my fingerprints which when inky create a perfect look of pine needles and grass.
Tools included a Graf von Faber-Castell Chevron fountain pen filled with DeAtramentis Document Black Ink, Pitt Artist Pens of various grays and nib sizes and the S&B sketchbook mentioned above. #Stillmanandbirn #fabercastellusa
Just came back from Northwestern University Hospital, where, I had an ultrasound performed on the veins of my legs after looking into a mysterious tender and swollen spot that appeared four days ago. All clear. It seems our creampuff Uncle Darn just tore some muscles. Cue the Stones…”What a drag it is getting old”. Pictured, my clothes patiently waiting for the procedure. Fountain pen and Pitt Artist Pens on Goldline Watercolour sketchbook. On the second sketch, got that quickie in during the ultrasound procedure. Should have had the soundtrack for The Jetsons, Star Trek, & Lost In Space. I was so impressed with my US techie Vanessa, that I promoted her right there on the spot to Doctor ‘n’ errythang! Yes, that is a very exacting representation of my knee. Y’all know I’m a realist. Lettering done once I got home. Faber-Castell Pitt Artist Pens, fountain pen, on Clairefontaine Goldline Watercolour sketchbook. Thanks to the terrific staff at a great hospital. And thanks to Medicare that I can get quality care. To those who have dogged the prospects of universal health care, Medicare (thank you very much FDR/Eisenhower/LBJ) or take health care professionals for granted, “You can k!$5 M? @zz”!!
Week 4 at The Human Anatomy Lab and my subject was the same cadaver Virginia Ferrante-Iqbal has been continuing to dissect. Now laying face up with the skin and subcutaneous fat removed from the left side, it is a dramatic demonstration of how thick those layers were. Virginia commented on how heavy and difficult to lift the tray was that contained the removed skin and fat.
I again showed up without the ideal color selection, thus the muscles wound up appearing too brownish in my drawing. Pitt Artist Pens on Toned paper.
Well, this may be helpful. I worked with videographer Hiromi Sogo to give y’all some sense of how I manage, or try, to sketch people who are not posing but rather engaged in some activity. This I do and have done, as those who follow me know, for more than four decades. This practice has helped me in many ways, but greatly in one in particular. When I had the chance to draw in court, I was already up-to-speed with capturing people in motion.
Here are close ups of the drawing used in the video: just a note, when transferring the video to this platform, some of the soundtrack drops out; a glit I look to correct and avoid in future videos. Learning curve stuff, my bad.
As mentioned in the video, I number the drawings in the order they were begun. To my eyes, there was a lot of “meat on the bone”, I.e. an interesting looking dude holding great poses about concentration, wearing a shiny, puffy jacket made more dramatic by the raking light that accentuated surface features with the cast shadows of near and mid distant structures. Drawing multiple perspectives or postures on the same page makes the transition from one position to the next easier as the subject moves and/or returns to a similar posture allowing you to add or complete the drawing. Afterwards, it also makes for better side by side comparisons since you’re not flipping back and forth to compare and contrast drawings.
You can see the preliminary or searching sketch for which I used a light Flesh tone. That establishes the general silhouette and will be a place holder if the subject suddenly moves just after I’ve begun drawing. I managed to knock in a good deal of his face and hair but he moved before I could get to his hand. When he returned to this pose about 45 minutes later, my “notes” were in place and I was able to pick immediately where I’d left off.
Evident in these drawings ing s is my use of several tools, one very important amount them are my fingers as you can see the marks left by my fingerprints.
Those fingerprints create hatch marks that are quite distinct from the hatching created with a stylus be it pen or pencil. Varied marks have great appeal to me in that they can enrich the drawing and their combined effect is to increase the descriptive nature of the marks. But another, very crucial reason I draw with an array of different tools is to take advantage of the inherent attributes of a given tool and by doing so save myself time. Most important in drawing a dynamic subject where you’ve no idea when your subject could move or altogether leave, is to draw efficiently. Why overwork a small nib when a big brush affords greater coverage. Fingerprints create multiple hatch marks simultaneously that are also very difficult to emulate with the stroke of a pen. An inky finger will come in handy if you should want a smudged tone. Add to this collective of mark making, a variety of hues and the drawing gains in richness and description. For the combined effect simply examine the close up below of figure #5.
Drawings were done done with a Faber-Castell Basic Black Leather fountain pen filled with DeAtramentis Document Black Ink and F-C Pitt Artist Pens on a Stillman and Birn Gamma Series sketchbook (S&B is now a subsidiary of Clairefontaine) which takes ink and pencil nicely and can handle watercolor, plus has a little pebbly surface that creates nice textures when smudging or scumbling.
