Posemaniacs

Every now and then I pull up the posemaniacs website and open Artrage in a window next to it and draw the 30 second or 60 second set. In this drawing I did a layer in blue and a layer in red and then turned on both layers for this effect. It's a pretty cool site, especially if you like drawing people in strange poses without skin.

Charcoal Study

It feels good to get my hands dirty messing around with real charcoal.

Casablanca, Morocco

I was expecting more from Casablanca. We arrived early Saturday morning and had a short layover before flying on to Marrakech. I wandered around the airport hoping for a view of this fabled city but could barely even find a window. So I came back to the waiting area and sketched the food kiosk. Not too exciting, but hey, I was in Morocco.

Willey House Sketch

I went to Minnesota back in October 2009 to see the Marvin Window factory. The factory itself is actually way up in North Minnesota near the Canadian border in a small town named Warroad. Anyway, before we took the Marvin company plane up there, we had an amazing architectural tour of Minneapolis. The sketch on the left side I did from the balcony of the Guthrie Theater. To call it a balcony doesn't really do it justice. It's really a gi-normous cantilevered bridge that runs through the theater and hovers out over the Mississippi River. I was on the end of this bridge/balcony thing sketching the Gold Medal Flour company building.

The highlight of the trip was seeing the Willey House, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. The owners, Steve and his wife, Lynette, led the tour and described the restoration process. It was amazing. There is nothing like it I have ever seen. Evidently there were nearly 80 pages of drawings by FLW on this one house that is not more than 1700 sf. Not only did they restore it, they obtained the drawings from the Taliesen Fellowship to actually finish the house and furnish it with the furniture Wright specifically designed for the house. The little sketch on the right was done in the 5 or so minutes (and colored later) I had before we left. I sat in one of Wrights chairs and sketched away. As you can see, I didn't finish and sort of left out the middle. I wish I could have stayed for a week to sketch it and soak up the beauty that is there. If you want to learn more, click here to go to the Willey House website. That's cool too.

Oh and I had my picture taken with Mary Tyler Moore!

A Business Man

A new pen (Itoya Doubleheader), the latest edition of Architect magazine, my moleskine journal, and a lunch break conspired to inspire this drawing. And now it's on view for the world to see. Amazing.

By the way, this is Robert A.M. Stearn. He's a really famous architect and I didn't even realize it was him I was drawing until a few days later. I think he looks a bit like Squidward on SpongeBob. What do you think?

Carry a Sketchbook!

The sketchbook is a great place to learn. I once heard that if you want to be a great artist, then you have to carry a sketchbook with you. There isn't one great artist in history who didn't. I'm not sure if that's true but I believe it.

I was looking at these sketches and trying to determine what I learned. Here are just a few things. The left drawing of the old chevy pickup - copied this from a Fine Homebuilding article. I loved the way the rust looked so that's what I wanted to replicate. In this one little sketch, I tried several different approaches with different levels of success. Also studied ways to paint chrome, glass reflections, headlamps, person silouettes behind reflections etc. On the right is my friend Carlos. I love drawing faces and especially faces of friends and family. I used doc martins watercolors along with my standard windsor and newton set. The five o'clock shadow and background taught me the most here.

Always carry a sketchbook - and sketch!