Drawbridge Control Tower Over the Chicago River

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Chicago has more drawbridges than any other city in the country (if you believe the guy who does the PBS specials).  This is a control tower for one of those drawbridges near the Sears Tower (soon to be renamed the Willis Tower, but I’ll be surprised when people around here start referring to it as such).

I drew this during the last 15 minutes of my lunch hour; we are finally starting to get some nice temperatures here.  Given the short amount of time spent, I was obviously not going for a great amount of detail — I just wanted to capture the shadows.  My proportions are off a little — the tower is actually a little more squat than I have captured here.  But I am still glad to be able to get outside to draw.

Wine, Lemons, and Song

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OK, well, wine and a lemon anyway.  The song is up to you.  Why did I choose these items to draw tonight?  For the very profound reason that they were sitting on the kitchen counter near each other, and I happened to be standing next to them when I decided I wanted to draw something.

This is my first try with vine charcoal – two sticks; one hard and one soft.  Vine charcoal does not seem quite as black as willow, and it seems a little easier to control gradation with the vine. Maybe I’m just getting more comfortable with charcoal in general; I won’t really know for certain until I do another drawing with willow.

It’s probably a little early for me to be rushing to judgment, but having worked with a couple of different kinds of charcoal and different degrees of hardness, I think I prefer the softer charcoals.  Working with a soft, mushy stick of charcoal feels more like painting than drawing.  The hard charcoal seems like it will be useful for working with finer detail and lighter shades of gray, so I won’t be throwing it out or anything.

Things That Make Me Cry

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It’s tax day in the US; and that always make me a little weepy.  Appropriately enough, this red onion brought a tear to my eye too (Everyday Matters Challenge #179 – Draw an Onion).

Continuing with my exploration of charcoal, this was done completely with willow charcoal in an 11×14 Strathmore 400 Series drawing pad that I bought back in January and haven’t touched since.  The quality of the scanned image is a little weird in spots, because my scanner is puny, so I had to scan in four separate images and stitch them together — will have to consider using a regular camera in the future.

I’m still trying to get control over the charcoal so I can get a good range of shading, especially in the mid-tones.  When I lay it down, it is too dark; then when I blend, it gets too light.  Or, I wind up with all the mid-tones appearing to be the same shade, and the resulting image (in this case, the face of the fat part of the onion) looking flat and boring.  Then I start mucking with it, and overwork the whole thing until I kill any remaining life in the thing.  Obviously, Jeff needs more practice.

A Little Warmth on a Cold Spring Day

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stove

I tried to get outside to draw today.  I really did.  But it was cold again.  Maybe I’m just a wimp, but the thought of sitting down somewhere for thirty minutes or more when the temp is in the 40′s is just not my idea of fun.  So, another inside pic.  Sigh.

More charcoal play, though.  So that was fun. I’m really enjoying the organic quality charcoal is bringing to my work; though not so much on this one as the vases.  I can’t wait to try it on an outdoor subject.

In the meantime, I claim victory over Everyday Matters challenge #159 – Draw a Favorite Cooking Tool.  A stove is a tool, isn’t it?

Vases

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vases

I finally broke down and bought a box of willow charcoal today.  This is my first charcoal sketch (well, my first one in 22 years).  Between illnesses, a heavy work schedule, a bunch of home projects, opening day (woot!) and some good-ol-fashion laziness, this is my first sketch at all in several weeks (unless you count some sketches I did as part of the planning phase of those home projects).

The weather in Chicago has not been cooperative, either.  I keep telling myself, “if it’s nice tomorrow, I’ll get outside and draw.”  And then the next day is cold, windy, rainy, snowy, or all of the above.  I know this is what ‘Everyday Matters’ is all about, but I’m not afraid to tell you, I’m getting real tired of drawing the stuff sitting around my home.

That said, I can’t tell you what a pleasure it was to draw with a burnt tree.  The charcoal is nice and dark, and smudgy and splotchy and, well, almost paint-like the way I can push it around on the page.  As far as a rendering, this is most definitely not my most accurate work.  But I felt like I was really able to connect with the sketch in ways I haven’t felt up to this point.  I will definitely be doing more charcoal sketches; I just need to figure out a way to not get charcoal dust all over the house.

Essential Tool – A Pencil Sharpener

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Holy cow!  I can’t believe I let myself take two whole weeks off.  I must be mindful of this.  I definitely needed a break, as I was starting to feel like making art (OK, maybe not “art”, but whatever…) was a bit of a chore; but two weeks is a bit much.  I haven’t been completely slacking — I ordered new watercolors and have been busy working out how to mix reasonable grays and washes, but nothing that resembles actual artwork.

This is my pencil sharpener.  I like it because it holds all of the shavings in its own little container instead of letting them fall all over the dining room table; though, it does have a tendency to clog.  Part-way through the drawing, I realized I probably should have picked a different subject, because I needed to sharpen my pencils before I finished (duh).

More than anything, this was a paper test.  I’ve read a lot of posts by pencil artists who go on and on about the benefits of Bristol paper for drawing, and I wanted to test it out.

I stopped at the local art store a while back and picked up some Artist Trading Card packs of Bristol Smooth and Bristol Vellum.  These little packs are great because you get a good sample for just a couple dollars, instead of dropping a tenner on a pad that you may wind up hating.

This drawing was done on the smooth paper.

I like the smooth surface for its ability to blend, but I was less than satisfied with its ability to grab the graphite and pull out really dark darks.  I used really soft pencils; all the way up to 8B, but the darks are still pretty light.  I’m hoping the vellum finish does a better job.  If not, I may need to start integrating charcoal — I’d rather not, due to the mess and the fingers-on-chalkboard feeling I get when using charcoal.  On the upside, I love the thickness of the paper.  It is substantial and it makes you feel like you are producing something worth sharing (as opposed to my sketchbook, which feels–well–sketchbooky).

Jefferson Memorial At Night

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jefferson_memorial

In keeping with the theme of the day, which apparently is “Washington DC Architecture”, I have sketched the Jefferson Memorial.

This is a tough one, because a significant portion of the light comes from inside the building.  I opted for the pen and ink + watercolor approach on this one, and I sort of wish I had left the pen and ink out of it.  Oh well, live and learn.

US Capitol Dome

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Sunday morning in the U.S. means political talk shows on every major network.  And every one of them, it seems, is set against a backdrop of the U.S. Capitol Dome.

I’m thinking that March will be a good month to really work on learning to use watercolors.  This painting was done using 2 colors (Winsor Blue and Yellow Ochre) from my Cotman travel set (my thanks to Kate Johnson and Phyllis who commented on my last post that I should use less water).  I purposely left the colors largely unmixed just see what the effect would be.

I really admire the work done by the contributors over at Urban Sketchers, and I look forward to warmer weather so I can get outside to sketch some architecture.  In the meantime, I have plenty of work to do.

Eggs Revisited

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I don’t know what it is about food-related subjects, but I seem to have an obsession with them.  Here’s another rendition of the eggs I sketched in pen & ink last week.  I think this one came out quite a bit nicer.

Ever since I got my watercolor kit, I’ve been disappointed by the quality of the color — they just don’t seem as vibrant as I want them to be.  I’ve been wondering if that is because (a) they are dried pan colors, (b) they are student-grade paints (the Cotman line from Winsor & Newton), (c) I don’t know what I’m doing, or (d) all of the above.  So I decided I would try artist-grade watercolor from a tube.

Because artist-grade watercolors are not cheap, and because I didn’t know how much of my problem was related to the paint, I didn’t want to break the bank on a whole pallet full of new colors.  One tube would be enough to experiment with.

I chose lamp black.  Yeah, yeah, I know… you aren’t supposed to use black from a tube.  But it was a color that I didn’t already have in my pallet, and it seemed like a good color to play with while I decide whether I’m going to splurge on some “real” colors.

Here’s what I found:

First, while it is true that I don’t quite know what I’m doing, it turns out that the consistency of paint from a tube is very different from the consistency of reconstituted pan paint.  Again, this might be due to the difference in artist-grade paint vs. student-grade paint; but the difference is akin to the difference between basketballs and bellybuttons.

Second, the paint from the tube is vibrant.  It is easy to get good variations from the lightest light to darkest dark.  I’ve never had this kind of positive experience with my pan paints.

Third, even though it seems like you are spending a fortune on paint ($7 for a tiny 5ml tube), you use a surprisingly small amount of paint.  This egg painting is 5.5 x 8.5 inches, and the amount of paint I used would fit comfortably on the head of a roofing nail.

As excited as I am about what I’ve learned from this little experiment, I won’t be racing out to replace all my paints just yet.  Now that I’ve seen what the consistency of my paint should be like, I’ve got a lot more experimenting to do to see if I can get that same consistency out of my pans (if you’ve got any tips, post ‘em in the comments).

A Taste of the Islands

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What better way to beat the cold than to “Think Warm”?  In this case, I’m thinking Jamaica, mon.

I gave myself a couple of days off.  I desperately needed the break.  Tonight’s effort was not exactly a triumphant comeback (it is almost bedtime after all), but I kinda like it.

I was thinking about adding a pen-and-ink outline; but given the amount of color, I think it may actually distract.  I just wish I could get a little more contrast out of my watercolors.  I wonder how much of this has to do with using the back side of the watercolor paper (yes, I know I’m being a cheapskate!)?

Media: Cotman watercolors and B pencil.

Just When I Was Feeling Good About My Progress

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bad_cars

I thought my sketching was coming along nicely.  I was gaining some confidence.  I was thinking, Hey, this is getting easier all the time!  And then TODAY happened.

I’ve been a fan of racing for a long time.  Cars, trucks, boats, motorcycles, lawnmowers… you name it.  If it’s got an engine, I’ll watch to see who can drive it fastest.  And I marvel at the artists who capture these vehicles on paper.  So I thought I’d try to capture one of my favorite stock cars.  I thought it would be fun to get out my new colored pencils and try them out.

About halfway through it though, I realized that I really didn’t like how the drawing was progressing.  Frustrated, I decided to put away the colored pencils and go back to basics: black and white.  Without color to worry about, I reasoned, I can just focus on getting the lines and the shading right.

Less complexity… should be easier to get something decent, right?  Well, not tonight.

I closed up the sketchbook and went off to surf the web.  Of course, I wound up looking at the work of some brilliant sketch artists online, and that only served to create further angst about my bad sketch day.

bad_sketch10001I didn’t want to go to bed without having created something that I could be happy about.  And I decided that maybe today was just not a good day to draw from a photograph.  I should draw something from life.  I usually have more success with drawing from life anyway.

I’ve been thinking about draw our spinning cycle for a while, and tonight seemed like the perfect night to tackle it.  It’s a simple shape, really… just a couple of straight, flat bars connected at an oblique angle, and a big circle at the bottom.  Well, wouldn’t you know that I couldn’t even get the bars to cross straight?!

I used to run.  A lot.  And one thing you learn when you run that much is that running every day is actually counterproductive.  The rest days are as important as the running days.  I’ve been on a ‘draw every day’ kick recently, and I’m beginning to wonder if a rest day might be helpful.

On the other hand, I certainly see the merit of periods of quantity over quality.  The act of pushing through the days when you’re just not at your best; the days when all you can think of is, “who am I kidding?  I’m no artist”; the days when you consider chucking it all and returning to the couch to watch reruns of The Office because at least you can’t fail at that… that’s got to have some merit, right?

I considered not posting these sketches.  I am honestly embarrassed to show them in public.  And yet, they are what they are.  A reflection of a less than perfect day.  We all have days like this — at least, I hope I’m not the only one.  And I want this blog to reflect the reality of what I’m learning.

I know that I’m going to have ups and downs.  If I don’t share the downs, I believe it will somehow diminish the triumph of the ups.  So I post even the things that don’t work out quite the way I’d like them to.

Just Playing With My New Toys

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My parents sent me a gift certificate to the Dick Blick art supply store, so today I went shopping.  I went there with the intention of buying a set of good colored pencils and few black permanent markers in varying thicknesses (including a brush tip, which I’ve never used before).

As I perused the aisles lusting after much of what I saw, I came across a Niji waterbrush.  I’ve read several blogs that espouse the wonderfulness of these things, so I grabbed one.  I wasn’t sure how well I would like it, but I figured for six bucks, how wrong could I go?

Promptly after I finished my shopping, someone in my stomach decided to stage a minor uprising — no doubt in protest over being fed a spicy burrito instead of a salad.  I was certain that I wouldn’t have a chance to play with my new toys.  But no matter how badly I feel, I couldn’t resist spending even just a few minutes playing.

This is my entry for Everyday Matters Challenge #39 — Draw your toothbrush.  I’m beginning to notice a preponderance of mouth-related subjects recently; I wonder if I should speak to someone about that.

Since I’m not feeling 100%, I didn’t spend much time at all on this.  The perspective is way off, the line is sketchy and weak, the colors are wildly inaccurate; but that wasn’t the point tonight.  Tonight was all about playing with my brush-tipped marker and my waterbrush.

I’m not sure how I feel about the brush-tipped marker yet.  Since I wasn’t fully engaged in the drawing process, I probably shouldn’t rush to judgment on the merits of this new tool.

However, I am absolutely in love with the waterbrush.  I know my work has not been particularly colorful up to this point.  That’s in large part due to me just not being able to work quickly with my watercolor set.  This little wonder is a plastic miracle.  There will still be a lot of black & white work coming from me (the foundation of a good painting is a good drawing, and I still need to develop the basics), but I guarantee you will be seeing a lot more color work in the near future.

The colored pencils are still in their tin.  They require sharpening before I can use them, and that seems like entirely too much work at the moment.  Maybe tomorrow night I’ll feel a little more energetic and will be able to do something with them.

Lunch with a Red-head

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For the second time in just over a week, having my sketchbook with me at lunchtime paid off.  If I had left it at home, I doubt very much that I would have seeked out paper and pencil.  But, since I had the stuff with me and a few extra minutes at my disposal, it worked out.

I’ve mentioned my aversion to lettering in the past.  And as I started to draw this, my first thoughts were, “how can I fake the sign?”  And then I almost immediately forgot all about that, and the next thing I knew, I had the whole thing sketched out; and not too badly if I do say so.

In fact, the signage and the roof are my favorite parts of this sketch.  They aren’t perfect, but for what this is–a small post-lunch sketch–I’m quite happy with them.  If I had to guess why, I would point to 3 things:

  1. Practice: I’ve been drawing more days than not for the past 10 weeks (Wow!  When was the last time I was able to say THAT?!).
  2. Confidence: With all that practice comes a certain level of trust that I can make a decent line when I need to.
  3. I don’t know if I can put this into a word or two, but: A willingness to bind and gag my inner critic until the work is done.  Sometimes you just have to convince yourself to shut up and draw.  The more I do it, the easier it is to beat my inner critic into submission.

One thing I think I’m starting to convince myself of is that no matter how difficult the subject matter, it’s all just shapes and areas of shade/color.  Some are a little more complex than others, but that just means you have to spend a little more time looking at them.

Interesting.  This was not my best work; but I feel like it pointed out a lot of really important things.  Oh American fast food… is there no problem you can’t solve?  I mean, besides obesity.

Eggs

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eggs_pen_and_ink

This was a real quickie… like, under 10 minutes.

I spent most of my evening setting up and photographing still-lifes. Over the weekend, I built a frame for a backdrop (I’ll be writing a post about that at some point in the near future, so you can build one yourself), and I was anxious to try it out. Unfortunately, I spent the bulk of my time trying to figure out how to get my camera to behave correctly — white balance is really important when you’re taking pictures of eggs on a white background.

Long story, short: I was too tired to start a proper drawing, but I was feeling bad about not having drawn anything in the past three days. I think spending so much time on the Manet drawing allowed a certain amount of inertia to set in. So I decided to knock out a really quick sketch before I call it a night.

This composition will be reworked into something of a more finished piece later in the week — probably in pencil, but I haven’t ruled out making an attempt at this in watercolor; it would make for an interesting monochromatic study, especially since I have such trouble getting really dark darks out of my paints.

I ran out of paper on the right, which is why the rest of the whisk is missing; but for 10 minutes worth of work, I’m not going to complain.

Fed Up With Mallarme

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I’m just bored with this guy. And it shows. His face lacks the character and depth of the original painting, in particular when compared with the jacket (which I am really happy with, by the way).  I’ve lost focus and just can’t seem to concentrate on getting the values to match any more.  So you know what? I’m moving on to other subjects. Maybe I’ll come back to it someday and finish it (don’t hold your breath), but this has taken way too many hours and I’m just not that into it.

More Mallarme

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I had plans outside the house tonight; so I was only able to spend about 45 minutes.

I like the way this is coming together, but there is a war going on in my head.  On one side is an army of perfectionists who want the outcome to be beautiful and accurate no matter how long it takes.  They are highly skilled, disciplined and precise.  On the other side is a rag-tag crew of militant anti-perfectionists (is there really no English word that means the opposite of ‘perfectionist’!?).  They are poorly trained, but hell-bent on swift and decisive action so they can move on to the next battle before they have a chance to think too much about it.

I just wish I could achieve this kind of result without all the time investment.  I have other things I want to draw.  And I want to draw them all NOW.  The thought of spending 4 or 5 more nights on this is not appealing.

Mallarme, Part Deux

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manet_copy_wip2I’m feeling a little tired today (didn’t sleep well at all last night, and I have no idea why), but I still managed to spend about 30 minutes this evening on the Manet copy.

I wanted to start with the darkest darks first, so I can judge everything else against that baseline.  I used an 8B pencil and a blending stump for the darkest parts of the jacket.

I have a little work to do to fix the face, but I was pretty sure that if I tried that tonight, it would just make things worse.  I’ll save that for a night when I’m feeling a bit better.

Based on my progress tonight, I’m guessing I have another 3 1/2 to 4 hours of work remaining.  I must keep this in mind and not let myself fall into the trap of hurrying through just to get it done.  I can almost hear my high school art teacher’s voice in my head: “quality takes time”.

Portrait of Stephane Mallarme (Work In Progress)

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manet_copy_wip1I’ve been thinking a lot recently about how I’d like to develop my drawing style. As much as I admire the photorealistic work that some people can achieve, and as much as I’d like to get to the point that I can achieve that myself, I think I’d rather focus on developing a painterly style. What better way to develop that style than to copy a few paintings?

This is a work by Manet that I’m copying from an image on my laptop.

So far, I’ve put a grid on the paper (just in case you haven’t noticed), and laid out the basic composition. It took a little over an hour to get to this point.

It’s interesting, because I thought the grid would actually speed up the process. Instead, it only served to point out how far off my drawing is. This is one of the few drawings that I’ve actually pulled out an eraser — I usually just massage the drawing to fit with whatever I happened to lay down. The grid, I guess, serves as the drawing police: “You are out of line! Get back!”

portrait_of_stephane_mallarme_manet

Original by Manet

This is also my first multi-day drawing. I usually do whatever I can in one sitting, mainly because I don’t want to let all my stuff stay out, taking up space on the dining room table or kitchen counter. Working from a picture helps with that.

Stay tuned…

(For reference, I’ve also included a picture of the original)

Busse Woods Boat Launch

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busse_woods

I’ve been carrying my sketchbook back and forth to work every day for the past few months. I wake up in the morning, get ready for work, and dutifully drop the sketchbook and pencil bag into my laptop case; then off to work I go. I’ve purposely avoided setting any goals like, “I’m going to draw at lunch today,” or “I’m going to stop somewhere on the way to work and sketch the people going by.” Instead, I just wanted to have my sketchbook with me; you know, just in case I get the urge.

Well, today I got the urge.

So, on my way back to the office after lunch, I stopped by a forest preserve along my route. I drove a long way around the lake looking for something nice to look at. Finally, I got to the boat launch and thought, “that’ll do.”

I was only able to spend about 15 minutes on this. Overall, I’m fairly pleased with the outcome (except for the apparent halo around the signpost; but that could be fixed quite easily).

Joe Torre

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joe_torre

I was flipping through a recent issue of Sports Illustrated while I was at the barber shop today. It had an excerpt from Joe Torre’s new book in which he gives his side of the story about how the negotiations for the 2008 season fell apart – an interesting story, even if it was a little one-sided. Anyway, there was a nice full-page pic of Joe.

The guy in the chair looked like he was about halfway through the haircut, so I knew if I wanted to draw this image, I’d have to hurry. I was right — I didn’t get very far.

My goal with this was to do a complete scribble job. I didn’t want to make any sort of contour drawing, and I wasn’t going to focus on smooth shading. I wanted to treat the whole thing almost like a paint sketch — no underdrawing; just shapes and areas of color. Instead of using color, I’d could only do shades of gray; due to time constraints I could only scribble them in as quickly as I could.

I would have liked to get a little better contrast, but I think the resemblance is somewhat there. I will probably try this technique again at some point. Giving myself the freedom to just focus on areas of shade instead worrying about getting the contours correct was interesting.

Laughter

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Laughter is one of those things that everyone understands, no matter the language. Even the deaf laugh the same as the hearing. No particular point here. Just sayin’…

This was inspired by a photo posted on thing-a-day.  It also fits nicely with Everyday Matters challenge #53 (Draw a mouth).

The drawing was done entirely with a mechanical pencil (along with a blending stump) in my sketchbook. I can’t seem to get those deep, deep darks with some of my softer drawing pencils (baffling); so even though it takes a little longer, the mechanical is quickly growing on me. It took me about an hour for those keeping score.

Until tomorrow… laugh.

Shadows

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shadows

Despite the cold, today was sunny. The dentist on the corner has a nice green awning that catches the shadow of the traffic light when the sun hits it just right.

There are parts of this that I am really happy with, and parts that I’d rather forget. All part of the learning experience, I suppose.

In particular, I wish I’d left the building (brick, awning, etc.) a whole lot more pale to give some additional contrast to the light pole and shadow. I was impatient, though (this is getting be a theme), and was trying to shortcut the process by guessing how dark it would come out on the first pass instead of working in layers. And the more I worked the painting, the less straight my lines got. I know better; that’s what really bugs me.