Buttnekkiddoodles

I’ve had an unusual and superb vantage point of a demolition and construction site which is directly across the street from my apartment. Never having watched a site from start to finish before I have been surprised by some of the developments. Upon demolishing the existing structure seen above in a snowstorm and just below that at night, the rubble was separated into different materials, i.e. bricks, the reusable ones were stacked on pallets and wrapped, banded and carted away for reuse. Metal materials were hauled away then general rubble was removed. But one of the biggest eye openers was the digging of roughly twenty 25-30’ cylindrical holes that had rebar cages inserted before being filled with concrete. Then, these concrete columns were covered up with the heavy equipment moving to dig the next holes.

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drawings executed with Faber-Castell Pitt Artist Pens and graphite on Stillman & Birn Nova Series Toned sketchbook, Tomoe River Paper.

 

Spent a solid month trekkin about the West coast and sat on my duff for a goodly number of hours. It’s the sort of thing that puts demands onyer fashion choices, ie comfy britches with a properly deep inseam and good travel shoes.

  

 

The lanscapes below were draw from a bus. The one with the birds on the telephone lines was a 15 minute sketch at a rest stop in southern Oregon, the others were enroute at 60 mph.

 

All drawings executed with ink, fountain pens, Pitt Artist Brush Pens, Platinum Carbon Ink, in various hbooks, Rhodia, Moleskine, Stillman & Birn, Tomoe River Paper.

Getting in some quality time at the Evanston Public Library. Pitt Artist Pens and a Graf Von Faber Classic Ebony fountain pen filled with Platinum Carbon ink on Tomoe River Paper.

An extended stay at a downtown restaurant, from two visits actually, yields a textbook example of the School of American Hodge Podge architecture. Pitt Pens on Tomoe River Paper.

Perhaps one of the most anticipated and auspicious days of my year is the 12 hour life drawing marathon at The Palette & Chisel on Labor Day. Though I am 63 years old and have had a number of jobs over the years that were not based on the semester structure of schools, the hangover of all that early life preparation, and the change of seasons, still creates this sense for me of new possibilities. Thus, when others look to take the day off from the grind, I look to put in one of my longer days working towards the betterment of my craft.

The sessions start at 7am with a model in the third floor studio, and later, models may be posing on the second floor and out in the coach house. Forty-five minutes to an hour are set aside for lunch out in the courtyard, but then I head back upstairs till the sessions conclude at 7pm. On average, I show up at 7:30-8 in the morning and last till 6:30-7 at night. If I get in some sketching on the 40 minute train ride to the Palette & Chisel, that serves to warm me up and gives me a sense of what the day’s efforts may yield.

    

Fountain pens, Platinum Carbon ink, Pitt Artist Pens, Tomoe River Paper, ledgerbook.