Marcel

This is Marcel.What can I say? Isn't he cool?

22x15 watercolor, ink and colored pencil. #221

Jack

This is Jack. He's an architect that lives and works out in the sticks.

When I first moved to Maine, I worked as a draftsman in Jack's office. It was there, with Jack, that I really learned how to draw. Not the computer kind of drawing that most architects were doing but drawing by hand - pencil in hand to large sheets of vellum. We drew buildings, of course - but these buildings and houses Jack conceived of and designed were like fine furniture or sculptures that you could live in - beautifully thoughtful, inspiring and magical places. These buildings and the landscapes they were situated in demanded that they be drawn beautifully to communicate their stature and sense of place. Jack does this better than anyone I know. He taught and inspired me to put "life" into the drawings we produced and I carry that intention with me to this day. Thank you Jack.

22x15 pencil and watercolor. #202

Dad

This is Dad. It took me a few tries to get this one right. I started off with a portrait that ended up too formal - like something you would expect on the wall of an office or library but it didn't feel right or authentic to me. It was too stiff and said too little. 

This final portrait carries a lot about my dad - my relationship to him and and what he means to me. There is love, intensity, passion, vision, purpose, love, discipline, intelligence, thoughtfulness, caring and love. Did I say love? 

I could not have hoped for, dreamed up, or imagined a better father.

11x15 pencil and watercolor on Twinrocker paper. #158

Laurel

This is Laurel. I first met her when she was 4 years old. I offered her a chocolate brownie at a gathering of friends. She said; "No thank you' I don't eat chocolate." "What?!!", I thought, "a four year old that doesn't eat chocolate!?"

I met her beautiful and divorced mother later that day and we fell in love. We were together for a few years but life and circumstances pulled us in different directions. Fortunately, Laurel and I still keep in touch through the magic of Facebook.

9"x6" Watercolor, gouache, and spray paint on Fluid watercolor paper with Artrage.

David

This is David. He's an architect friend of mine that lives nearby. He's a smart guy. About 15 years ago when I moved to Maine I began looking for a group of architects and builders to discuss a manuscript I had been reading titled "The Nature of Order" that was written by Christopher Alexander, an architect and professor at the University of California in Berkeley. 

We formed a group that met a couple of times a month for several years and David always provided amazing insights and then took us on tangential discussions that were fascinating. I don't see him as much now and I miss that.

I sketched this in my Grand Portrait Handbook Journal with pencil and watercolor.

Ed

This is Ed. He is the kind of friend we all hope to find and keep in our lives. I met him in the 7th grade in Houston, Texas. We performed "My Love is Alive" by Gary Wright in our school's annual talent show. He sang lead and played bass. I sang harmony and played guitar. We didn't win but we set the stage for a friendship that will last a lifetime.

12"x16" Gouache on Fluid watercolor paper.

Blue Joni

From a dream. But it was less about shading, which I did, and more about line quality. I just grabbed my tablet and started drawing when I awoke. It's from a Picasso Blue period drawing but Joni instead of the couple.

Brooklyn

Josh Schurr covers Joni Mitchell songs like nobody else. I heard his original song, Brooklyn, on YouTube and was inspired to do some art. I was thinking of  the album art on the cover of the Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young album, So Far, when I came up with the idea. Coincidentally or not, Joni Mitchell did the artwork on that album.

"The water met its Master, and blushed"

Sketched from a portion of a mural on the ceiling of the Ayasofya Church in Turkey. 

President Barack Obama

10"x14" Watercolor on handmade Twinrocker paper

Malala

Malala, a photo by Camden Sketcher on Flickr.

An amazing young girl. Sketched on a Samsung Note 10.1

3.24.12

This is Dad. I don't have too many opportunities to sketch him so I grabbed at this one. We were in the lounge on the Endeavor watching a documentary on Lonesome George, the last tortoise of his kind, so Dad was pretty still for this sketch. Unfortunately, I didn't have much time as the call to disembark came about 10 minutes into the drawing. I put him on my "Influential People" list, of course, but I'd like to do a better portrait of him some other time. For now, this will have to do.

Mahatma Gandhi

Another portrait... These are all part of the Influential People series which started with Daniel Quinn a few months ago. I first learned about this extraordinary man in the 1982 film "Ghandi". I was 20 years old, and having grown up in a very strong Methodist and Southern Baptist environment, I was just beginning to open myself up to understanding other religions and new ways of thinking.

Although Gandhi grew up Hindu, he drew inspiration from many religions including Buddhism, Theosophy, and Christianity. Ghandi dedicated his life to discovering Truth. He tried to achieve this by learning from his own mistakes and conducting experiments on himself. He called his autobiography "The Story of My Experiments with Truth". Gandhi summarized his beliefs first when he said "God is Truth". He would later change this statement to "Truth is God". 


For me, Ghandi opened up a door into a new world. I left behind the dogma of Christianity that I had held onto and began to look for the Truth.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir

Lately, I've been doing watercolor sketches of old black and white photographs. It's kind of fun imagining the colors and in the end you get something that brings an old photograph a bit more life. This is from a photo taken of Renoir in his studio sometime around 1912 .

The Story - Mother Teresa

Influential Person #1 - Daniel Quinn

For awhile now, I've been thinking about doing a whole sketchbook full of portraits of people that have had an influence on my life and the way I think and act in the world. If you believe that by sketching or drawing or painting someone that you can come to understand them better (as I do), then this kind of an exercise seems like a good idea. So I started a list of all the people I could think of that have had a significant influence on me and started collecting some images from internet searches. Here is my first victim - Daniel Quinn.

Daniel Quinn wrote a book called Ishmael. At the time I read it, some 20 or so years ago now, it had a profound impact on how I thought of myself and my place in the world. From Wikipedia - "Ishmael is a 1992 philosophical novel by Daniel Quinn. It examines mythology, its effect on ethics, and how that relates to sustainability. The novel uses a style of Socratic dialogue to deconstruct the notion that humans are the end product, the pinnacle of biological evolution. It posits that human supremacy is a cultural myth, and asserts that modern civilization is enacting that myth." . The book forced me to challenge some assumptions I had grown up with and, in doing so, it changed the way I saw the world.

I'll be posting these portraits periodically and numbering them in the titles but they are in no particular order of importance in their influence.