Buttnekkiddoodles

Okay, I spent a butt load of time in coffee shops. I rarely drink the stuff. Have in the past. That and horse troughs full of hot chocolate. More so the later. But I’m largely a tea tipper now, and the green and herbal stuff at that. It got to where I was downing dairy farms of milk and wheel barrels of sugar. Now I sip my tea, draw, and watch others come in for the fix and to work on their spread. I’m already a touch hype so the heart just had too much fuel at a time where the only body part getting any exercise was my wrist.

Just making use of the Pitt Artist Pens and fountain pens w/ Platinum Carbon. Just a couple pages to go in this ledger book which has been an absolute gas to draw in.

I’ve been making observational drawings, urban sketches as some would describe them, for two plus decades. In the past, the practice served to cull ideas for paintings, or to record things of note as a way of keeping my own picture files. To grab an image because with my poor memory I knew I couldn’t depend on the ability to just recall something, even if I felt it was arresting at the time. I drew to study people, their anatomy and movement. To work on problems, i.e. the way hair behaves and catches light. Or the ability to quickly observe and record fleeting scenes and postures. I dread going to life drawing sessions and opening up with scads of the rapid poses. The 20, 40,and 60 second stuff; yet I give myself over quite happily to doing just that in public as I commute about the city or loiter in a cafe. Sometimes it’s for the reasons given above, but as often as not, it’s just because I love doing that. Looking, and drawing, and thinking.

I am going to have my work featured on The Scream On Line if I can ever make myself write a bio/statement. I’ve been dawdling and procrastinating about doing it for, I dunno, maybe a few months by now. It’s been 4 years since I’ve painted and tho I have worked on prints that are of a narrative nature, the bulk of what I’ve done with my time has been drawing out and about in public. Now a bit of that has been during my treks back and forth to work and on extended trips across the country during which I give demonstrations and lectures about drawing. So, many pages serve as journaling, and I have captured spontaneous events such as on-the-street police interrogations and was present on a fresh crime scene where a water main was geysering alongside a building after some perp had made off with the pipe cap. Drew that. I’ve drawn people at work, as I did in Tampa, of the gentleman who gave me a straight razor shave and the fellow who made my pizza. Many of my friends, collectors, and fellow artist know me as a guy who’ll mount a soapbox even when there’s no crowd to harangue. Suffering in silence doesn’t seem to be part of my DNA and venting, (with dependable frequency) almost seems as much an outcome of my parasympathetic system as peristalsis. Quite therapeutic to me at times and quite insufferable to those around me most times. All the “clown” paintings, drawings, and prints fell under this genre. That of venting. Thinking out loud if I can be fair to myself. Observations of my times and reflections on those observations as they may relate to other times. These came out as narrative like imagery and were quite different from the bulk of what I draw now. Gone are the 19th and 15th century references. Gone are the carnies and their bloody scrums with townies and brutal internecine wars. Gone for now are all the notes of financial mishugganuh and the portraits and caricatures of the public and political rogues who’ve played high profiled roles in the undoing of so many lives and fortunes.

But are they?  Gone that is. All that grist I’d been milling for twenty  some years. Six years ago the art market tanked after years where sales had buoyed my career among others. A couple years later, the banks started tottering and the housing market split it’s gut wide open. Huge layoffs saw scores people the very libraries and cafes I’d been loitering in, pouring down hot cocoa and pouring over the news and financial sections of the Wall Street Journal and The NYT. The unemployed found their way to the cafes and libraries where they worked on resumes, looked for jobs, encouraged and consoled each other, had interviews, talked to financial advisors about resolving mounting debt issues, read, slept, and drank coffee. Others took to airing out favorite beefs with no less restraint than the grouch writing this post. Bailing out the pirates who shocked the economy was a Siren song  heard in just about any public haunt  I could stumble into. The tug of war over immigration and hot button issues left and right could be heard gusting about  any city I visited. Energy prices, mineral extraction, perpetual war, perpetual political campaigns….Jeez, I even got into it over Tea Party positions and striking Teachers Unions, standing track side, waiting for a train in a damn near empty town in northern New Mexico. I’ve managed to dodge many mud fights over the Arab uprisings, Gay marriage, class warfare, sequestration, presidential retreats on campaign assurances, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mack, North Korea,…..I’ll stop. Contentious times. Sitting in these cafes, restaurants, libraries, riding so much public transportation I do get wind of a lot of peoples issues. But I haven’t distilled all this journaling and drawing into resolved paintings or resolute images that encapsulate any zeitgeist. I’m just drawing them. My fellow citizens. Their woes and rewards in tack, they go about their days and I draw them.  And I look to see if the drawings say anything in themselves about these citizens, most strangers, about how they’re bearing up under the times. I think that is an important and tricky thing to capture. Their bearing.

 

Headed out to Garfield Park to meet up with a dozen artists from the Urban Sketchers Chicago crowd. Brought along a cluster of colored Pitt Pens but mostly went with the b/w monochrome. You’ll see evidence of fountain pen there as well (Visconti Rembrandt w/ Platinum Carbon ink).

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.

     

Visconti fountain pen w/ Platinum Carbon ink

Argo Tea

Cool Daddio readin’ the paper

problem solver

Got into a life drawing session Friday nite with mixed results. I’ll post those later. Wanted to get several quick studies of the fellow with long hair reading the paper but people kept sitting in front of me blocking my view. Still running into problems trying to get the web page to look as I wish. Graf von Faber fountain pen, Noodler’s Ottoman Blue Ink, Pitt Artist Pens, Visconti Fountain Pen, Platinum Carbon Ink. Working in an old ledger book given me by Louisville Ed. Big and roomy, perhaps a bit awkward drawing in tight public spaces like a bus or the orchestra, but it’s best attribute is how impenetrable the pages are.

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.