Studio Hermit - sketches, studies and diverse notes

New year, new materials, two inspiring books

2011-01-20T14:21:00.009-05:00

I celebrated New Year's Day by opening up Felix Scheinberger's Mut mit Skizzenbuch, a really fun, go-get-'em-tiger primer on drawing in public places. Lots of great thoughts from a master of the medium and a good, rousing way to begin 2011.

One of the jolly things about going through Felix's book was the variety of materials he uses, and the way each set of materials choices illuminates particular aspects of the way he draws. He's got a broad set of stylistic modes, but there's really a singular visual imagination at work behind all of them.

The way he uses different materials really brings out the particularities of his different approaches. So, of course, I was all like: I wanna try that!

Taking my cue from one of the pieces in his book I really liked, I bought a kraft paper sketchbook and packed a pen bag with some different drawing materials than the ones I've been using most often. At the moment, I'm still working with the same subject (mostly people), but I think that'll be evolving in some new directions as time goes on.

For one thing, I'm sort of embracing textual additions to the drawings at the moment; partly because I've also been looking at Maira Kalman's Principles of Uncertainty, which takes a very picture-book attitude about text and picture and the way they bounce off one another, but which applies that attitude to a very different kind of subject matter.

I think the texts in these scans are pretty crudely done and I almost didn't post them because of that. But I think - I hope - they're the beginning of something and will eventually contrast with a more evolved execution.

Happy 2011!

2011-01-20T14:20:00.002-05:00

Good bye, 2010...

2010-12-31T17:27:00.007-05:00

...we weren't really friends and I'm not going to pretend that we were.

Next!

New York City in winter

2010-12-31T17:10:00.006-05:00

New Yorkers in winter operate under the assumption that the only thing warmer than wearing black is wearing more black.

On the subway, the thick coats fold up around people until you completely lose any sense of the bodies inside. All you get are these little wedges of face served up on layered platters of fabric.

Monster wrap-up

2010-12-31T17:06:00.003-05:00

December is usually a monster-rich month. This year was no exception.

End-of-year sketchbook dump

2010-12-31T16:40:00.007-05:00

These were from an extreme taxidermy event that a friend of mine was involved in: very dark venue, couldn't see what I had until after I got home. Most of it came out rubbish, but I liked these OK.

I sat too far back to get any good drawings of the taxidermy, which is a pity because a lot of it was very fun. Won't make that mistake next time.

The moleskine pages below were from a storytelling night another friend was involved in. Another completely dark venue, but single individuals in front of a mike actually make a pretty great sketching subject.

The theme of the evening was college majors and how they did - or didn't - influence life after school. This guy had a story that managed to be both raunchy and sweet, and included a quite impressive mathematical proof.

This woman was a penniless artist who exacted a brilliant revenge on thieving neighbors.

The original drawings all include quotes from the stories in the blank space on the left; I didn't feel quite right about blogging someone else's language, so I took them out.

I think there's going to be a lot more text in the sketchbooks in the new year. I've been looking again at Maira Kalman's Principles of Uncertainty and like very much the way she uses text and image to enrich one another. Picture book thinking, of course, but with a grownup twist.

Our hostess for the evening had a variety of tales to tell, including a tale about her mother's assertion that Santa Claus is Jewish.

This guy worked for Home Depot and made very smart use of the language of employee training to talk about his time there.

Finally, a couple of figures from an undated Chelsea Market session. Liked them well enough to want to include them.

Chelsea Market

2010-12-03T17:54:00.007-05:00

Wednesday was a serious weather day, so a plan to go draw lemurs at the zoo turned into a day of drawing a whole different set of primates in a whole different habitat.

Well, OK, so... maybe not that different.

Autumn Monsters

2010-11-18T15:30:00.006-05:00

I was on the road almost continuously this year, including one marathon stint from the beginning of August to the end of October. By the end, the above drawing is pretty much what I felt like.

Somebody asked me a while back why I never draw self-portraits. I was like: do I ever draw anything else?

New York Fashion Week

2010-11-09T23:51:00.018-05:00

Back in September, I spent a day drawing with Ann, Felix and Sebastian. We found our way to Lincoln Center for New York Fashion Week, where we drew on the plaza as people came and went from the tents. Eventually, we wound up getting invited to the Harper's Bazaar Accessories party, where, since we didn't really know anybody, we just kept drawing.

Landscapes

2010-11-09T23:36:00.006-05:00

I haven't had a bunch of time for drawing during all the recent travels, but I did get an hour or so in downtown Oklahoma City.

Other one is from a way different hour or so at the High Line back in September. A little followup session after the day at Fashion Week.

A few more travel sketches

2010-11-09T23:26:00.004-05:00

Two heads from LaGuardia, and a new page of subway sketches.

Sketches from here and there

2010-10-31T21:21:00.003-04:00

To be precise, here in the lovely New York City subway...

...and there in the Philadelphia Airport.

It's a hundred million degrees in New York this week. Seriously.

2010-08-05T23:23:00.005-04:00

One hundred million degrees.

That is all.

Chelsea Market with KLS

2010-08-05T23:01:00.006-04:00

My friend Karen visited and we decided to make us some pictures. Sometimes I am a Lazy Sketcher: instead of a museum or remote rural pastorality, or an outside, city-in-overheated-summer location, we decided to do it in a place where air conditioning, fresh-baked scones and first-rate coffee would be in ready supply. This is why so many of my sketches get made at Chelsea Market. It's all of the above. Plus, convenient tables!

I forgot my watercolors, so I drew with the walnut ink I usually use for monsters. I think the people wound up a mite monster-y as a result.

Or maybe this is just the way I'm seeing people at the moment.

More Chelsea Market watercolors 7.27.10

2010-07-28T22:17:00.007-04:00

Chelsea Market watercolors

2010-07-19T13:38:00.005-04:00

It's been hot and humid all this month here in lovely New York City. The studio was sweltering and hiding at home by the air conditioner was giving me cabin fever, so I spent yesterday in the great cool cave of Chelsea Market. Brought the watercolors to disguise my loafing as industry.

I'm crafty that way, sometimes.

Spring monsters

2010-07-19T13:30:00.004-04:00

Lots of travel this spring: Cleveland, Moscow (again), North Carolina. Didn't do all that much drawing, even on the planes, but here's some of what I did do.

Bar sketches

2010-07-19T13:12:00.006-04:00

A little behind on the sketchbook-scanning, thanks to a lot of travel and a lot of other obligations. These are from a friend's show back in April. Near-total darkness in the venue encouraged the brush pen, with rather different results than the ballpoint I use in the subway.

100 Eyes #24

2010-04-06T00:09:00.002-04:00

Hominid skulls at the Natural History Museum

2010-04-05T23:57:00.007-04:00

A series of pretty quick, pretty rough sketches at the American Museum of Natural History. For some reason, the human evolution hall is almost completely unlit in many places. I could barely see the paper when I was drawing these, let alone the specimens I was trying to draw. In addition to the near-total darkness, they have some incredibly loud sound installations that are really distracting.

I love this museum, but this particular exhibition design is a total nightmare. Next time I go, I'm bringing an iPod, noise-cancelling headphones and miner's helmet.

Mourners at the Met

2010-04-04T14:38:00.005-04:00

The Met's main medieval room is playing host at the moment to a quite wonderful little army of statues, alabaster figures of mourners from the tomb of John the Fearless, Duke of Burgundy, and his wife, Margaret of Bavaria. Their regular home, a museum in Dijon, is being renovated and they're here in New York for a few months while the work is being done.

I've already drawn the Met's own mourners - a couple of times, in fact - which are in much less prime condition than the visitors and it was very good to get a crack at some new works in the same category.

The Met's website has a page about the work, with a link to an especially tasty 3-D gallery that lets you rotate the figures onscreen for all-around viewing. There's a related show of spectacular illuminated manuscripts. This, taken with the Catherine of Cleves show at the Morgan Library, make this quite the spring for late medieval gorgeousness.

New Capital Mysteries art

2010-03-17T22:32:00.004-04:00

Art for the latest Capital Mysteries book is up over at the (much-neglected) other blog.

Sketches from the High Line

2010-03-17T22:24:00.004-04:00

Back from a long couple of trips, took advantage of early spring sunshine and did some drawing on the High Line the last couple of days. Nothing ambitious, just unwinding.

Monsters from Moscow

2010-03-17T19:53:00.005-04:00

Loooong plane rides to and from Moscow this month. Aisle seat + insomnia = monsters!

Holiday Travel Monsters! Happy New Year!

2009-12-31T15:40:00.006-05:00

Last blog post of the year... as the sun goes down here in cold, cloudy New York City, it's weird to think that it's already 2010 in some parts of the world. Before the Magic Date Change Line swings over my particular patch of the planet, here are the fruits of the season's back-and-forthing.

Despite the frantic racing around that always seems to happen this time of year (or maybe because of it) the holidays always tend to make me introspective.

Well, OK, more introspective:

Stuffed into public transportation, the most comfortable place is usually the one found by crawling as far back into my head as I can.

This year although there wasn't as much mileage as there sometimes is (only 2500 or so... way below average). Still, train delays, closed airports, massive snowstorms, insomnia in other people's guest rooms and the odd would-be terrorist attack still made for some fine monster habitat.

Here's wishing everyone a happy, creatively fertile 2010.

Happy Holidays!

2009-12-16T19:22:00.006-05:00

...you'll have to look elsewhere for Santas and snowflakes.

Year-end moleskine review

2009-12-16T18:25:00.011-05:00

Over the course of 2009, I've filled a couple of hundred pages standing at the end of the subway car drawing people's heads. Nothing compared to some of the sketchers out there, but enough to get a little repetitious sometimes. Ballpoint pen, manila paper... it really is just one head after another.

But when I'm having a good day of it, I see how much variety there is in that monotony... how really, really different every face is from every other face. Because I draw from my head so much, it's become really important to me to get this kind of observational work in.

I don't suppose any of these drawings will form a basis for a character in a book illustration, but collectively they've done a lot to expand my range. When I sit down to draw out of my head, there's a lot more in there because of this work.

So here's a little set of samples from the 2009 Moleskines. A few repeats from earlier posts, but not too many:

Craig Chesler at Banjo Jim's

2009-11-17T23:14:00.007-05:00

Not quite my usual setting or materials: a very dark bar and a Japanese brush pen that my friend Walter gave me last Christmas. But when someone you sort of know announces a last-minute solo instrumental ukulele set at in the East Village on a Tuesday night... well, it's caution to the wind.

The music turned out to be great: not only Craig's, which is always delightful, but the other musicians on the roster as well. In particular, a kid called Alec Gross was amazing.

Craig is actually better-looking than this. Sorry Craig!

CLE-LGA

2009-11-16T18:51:00.001-05:00

JFK-LAX

2009-11-03T12:52:00.003-05:00

Spent most of October in airplanes, which meant, among other things, lots of time to draw with very limited materials in very limited physical circumstances.

Lots of seatmates to frighten, sometimes on purpose (I sat next to some whiners I didn't want to encourage in conversation).

JPEG's are named by flight. Sometimes it's the only way I remember where I've been.

LAX-JFK

2009-11-03T12:47:00.003-05:00

"At a certain point, he realized that the others were not coming back..."

2009-11-03T12:44:00.005-05:00

"... because they were, in all likelihood, already dead."

Ink monsters on watercolor paper

2009-11-03T12:35:00.006-05:00

This set (including the drawing in the posting above this one) was drawn in a watercolor sketchbook, which I don't think took the ink very well. It'll be OK for watercolor sketches but for in-flight monsters, I think I need a more absorbent paper.

These were part of a Newark-Phoenix round trip.

State of the Sketchbook

2009-11-03T12:23:00.005-05:00

One of the things I'm pleased about with the street and subway sketching at the moment is that I think I'm expanding and experimenting with style... different looks for different days, but building an overall vocabulary at the same time.

Project in progress

2009-11-03T01:01:00.006-05:00

One of my projects in September was a book dummy. I don't like to talk too much about things that are still in progress, but here's a hint: it involves dogs.

September Monsters

2009-11-03T00:54:00.005-05:00

I rented an outside work space back in September, which was great, then spent October flying around the country trying to put some money in the bank. Blogging much neglected as a result.

Catch-up time! These monsters are a little bit of September's production. Just fooling around, getting used to watercolor again after much too much time away.

Characters

2009-08-29T20:17:00.013-04:00

I've been trying to go to a new place with the live sketching: not just to draw the people or whatever, but to see them as characters. To connect the sketching I've been doing back to the idea of storytelling. These were done today at Chelsea Market... they're not exactly storybook characters yet, but they are a little further from the kind of watercolor people-sketching I've been doing.

Latest airport sketches

2009-08-29T20:14:00.005-04:00

These people were real.

These were not:

Monsters of the air

2009-08-11T23:30:00.008-04:00

We've all done our share of airport sketches. Some people make entire books about the stuff you can see from terminal windows.

But once you take off, it's all sensory deprivation. James Jean has done some dandy in-flight drawings (if you haven't seen them in his sketchbooks, go this instant and look at them... his site, annoyingly, doesn't let you link to individual pages, so go to 'sketches', then look at the '2008 Mole A' drawings. If you love art, it'll make you dance around the room; if you make art, it'll make you want to hang yourself). Yes, I'll wait here 'til you're done.

*******

Awesome, no?

Anyhow, I had a different strategy for my August travels: headphones, iPod, monsters.

Seatmates a little freaked out.

Airport sketches

2009-08-11T23:19:00.007-04:00

Did some traveling over the last week or so. Sketches from the airports in Kansas City, Cleveland and New York. Moleskine has some subway sketches, too...

At some point recently, I made the decision to start including some upper bodies in these studies. Any more than that is often hard to see, especially on the subway, but I think it's helping differentiate the way each of the subjects sits on the page.

Fresh from the Laundromat

2009-08-11T23:16:00.004-04:00

Drew these this afternoon on 7th Avenue in front of the laundromat. Laundry and grocery shopping have become two of my prime sketching times...

Recent bits and pieces

2009-07-29T22:25:00.006-04:00

Had actual work to do the other morning, did this hermit thrush study as a warm-up.

Quick museum sketch using some of the new materials I've been working with.

Figures along Seventh Avenue, drawn while doing laundry.

Brooklyn street sketch

2009-07-16T03:08:00.004-04:00

Out for a day in Brooklyn with Ann Marshall and new friend Felix Scheinberger, joined briefly by the very hard-working Brian Floca. A new kind of sketching for me. This was my day's best.

More monsters

2009-06-24T23:08:00.002-04:00

New blog friend (or is that new friend blog?)

2009-06-17T11:17:00.003-04:00

In what's clearly one more sign of the coming Apocalypse, Jason Watson has finally put up his long-promised life-drawing blog. A few initial postings are up now, more are promised soon.

Monsters

2009-06-12T22:56:00.011-04:00

Not done for any assignment; just improvised for fun(?) on an afternoon out of the house.

Self-portrait as a mutant tree frog. Yes, it's been this kind of week.

Moleskines: NYC & Cleveland

2009-06-12T22:52:00.001-04:00

French Bronzes at the Met

2009-05-25T19:20:00.007-04:00

The show of French bronzes at the Met ended today and for all the times I went through it, I didn't get quite all the drawing done that I wanted. Managed to get this much in under the wire after seeing the Francis Bacon show with Jenny, David and a bunch of other art friends. Brian Floca joined us for post-lunch art adventures.

Video Wednesday: "I Hate Drake"

2009-05-20T16:08:00.003-04:00

If children's books were allowed to be like children's actual lives, this is what they'd sound like. Not even a little bit safe for work.

(courtesy of Cynthia Croot's blog disputed territories and www.getmortified.com.)

Met drawings

2009-05-18T00:57:00.007-04:00

Second (or maybe third) time around for the above figure; might be back for more at some point. It has a companion that I want to take on soon, too.

100 Eyes 20 -23

2009-05-18T00:51:00.002-04:00

Done from various magazine photos.

100 Hands 25 - 28

2009-05-12T22:41:00.005-04:00

Moleskine subway page

2009-05-12T22:38:00.003-04:00

Trying to liven up the subway sketches a little with some shading and fill from the brush pens. Detail below.

Small subway sketches

2009-05-12T22:35:00.002-04:00

100 Eyes #14-19

2009-05-12T22:33:00.001-04:00

Red-tailed hawk webcam

2009-04-22T13:55:00.011-04:00

OK, normally I don't do this, but how cool is it to watch red-tailed hawks feeding their puffball young?

This is a window ledge at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia and the images are live (no artificial lights at night, so it'll be dark after dark).

Courtesy of Marie Winn's Central Park Nature News. For more info, visit the source site.

UPDATE: Hmmmm. The above embedded video has only been working sporadically. If it's not working right now, try this link instead: webcam of a peregrine falcon's nest at 55 Water Street in lower Manhattan. Three different cameras, no less... give it a second to load fully.

UPDATE II: The peregrine falcon's eggs have hatched. Now she's got puffballs, too. Note: the webcam takes a minute to load a still picture, then another minute or so for the picture to start moving.

UPDATE III: Good lord... these hawks have like, tripled in size since I posted this link. Yikes.

Studio sketches: Dogs

2009-04-14T01:32:00.002-04:00

Working on some dog ideas, wanted to spend some time with the shapes of various breeds.

More Moleskine

2009-04-14T01:27:00.002-04:00

Slipper Room Sketches

2009-04-14T01:24:00.001-04:00

Men's heads

2009-03-27T00:04:00.004-04:00

Chelsea Market this afternoon

2009-03-26T23:47:00.002-04:00

New Moleskine - Met lobby

2009-03-26T23:43:00.004-04:00

Natural History, Met drawings

2009-03-18T16:09:00.008-04:00

Above, cormorant detail (full drawing below) from a morning at the American Museum of Natural History with Ann and Jason during the latter's recent sojourn in NYC.

Also below, three pieces from our day at the Met. We also had a dandy morning figure drawing at that temple of old-school awesomeness, Spring Street Studio. Holding off on posting the nudes at this blog, at least for the moment, but suffice it to say, some drawing got done.

Variations: Teachers

2009-03-18T15:54:00.007-04:00

Spring allergies had me too dull to do any real work on Sunday, so I fooled around with the idea of teachers: old, young, eager, strict, worn-out. Found myself thinking of teachers I had back in elementary and middle school: the good, the bad, the weird. Bless 'em all, this many years later.

Cleveland, Philadelphia airports, mostly

2009-03-02T00:37:00.003-05:00

The next level of challenge for the sketchbooks generally is to make each page more composed: to make a framework of design decisions for each page that still allow for the spontaneity of impression-grabbing.

Mall sketches; brush pen

2009-03-02T00:24:00.007-05:00

Composite of a couple of hours of brush-pen sketching at a mall in Ohio. Nice to take this game out of town and work with some different body shapes.

This is a three-pen session: one pen that's a standard black, one that's a watered-down black and a third with watered-down walnut ink. It's not a bad tool kit, at least for now. Pleased that I'm learning to capture a little more detail as the people walk past; capturing and processing the information takes practice. Most of these are based on ten, fifteen... maybe twenty seconds' worth of impressions.

My three-day throwdown with a 560 year-old wooden nun

2009-02-21T21:10:00.014-05:00

Round One, in which our hero, on a day of museum sketching, lightheartedly engages a late medieval carving of St. Bridget of Sweden and very quickly gets his be-hind handed to him on a polished walnut plate.

A word to the unwary: you don't just jump into jagged Gothic drapery.

A second attempt is not any prettier. In fact, it is worse since our hero is, by this point, getting hungry. And the third, after lunch? Well...

Here's the thing about museum drawing: it's not the same as drawing at home. I was having to hold the drawing board, manage a couple of different pencils and an eraser or two with the same hand while still looking, drawing, correcting, thinking. I was standing up, looking up (since the sculptures in the main medieval hall at the Met are mounted pretty high) and the aching feet and tight back muscles definitely have an impact on the experience, therefore on the drawing.

None of which is news, exactly, but I think my awareness of it as a factor to be dealt with was clear to me in a way it hadn't been before.

For all of these reasons, my friend Jason, who has done some museum drawing in his day, regards it as an extreme sport: not for the weak, the undertrained or the faint of spirit.

In the past, I might have gone home from this experience discouraged.

But not this time.

I mean, I was discouraged, but not only discouraged. I've been on an artistic self-improvement project lately, and this seemed like a good opportunity. I wanted to go back and do it right.

Round Two, in which our hero begins by paying proper respect to St. Bridget with a full-figure survey.

Here was my thinking: if you want to solve a drawing problem, isolate it. Rather than starting over someplace else, I decided to eliminate variables and go back to St. Bridget. Same light, same subject, same materials. Same physical discomfort. But with the knowledge of the previous day's difficulties more clearly in my head, hoping that recognizing the challenges would make it easier to meet them.

By the end of the day, I felt like I was getting somewhere. The sleeve here is better defined (late medieval drapery is nothing is not clearly demarcated). The values are more coherent. There's a basic idea of what the light is supposed to be doing, which is trickier than it sounds, since the Met doesn't do single light sources: every piece in this hall has several spotlights on it, which makes for very dramatic viewing but very tricky drawing. You have to make a series of semi-artificial decisions about light hierarchy and then try not to get pulled off of them by well.. reality... as you go.

Round Three, in which our hero, after a late start and a scanty breakfast, attempts to consolidate his gains... with mixed results.

Not unhappy with the overall feeling of this drawing but the face is all wrong.

The problem with the late start and the scanty breakfast - as well as a third day of standing on my feet for hours and hours - is also how much your brain has to work: the process is part intuition, part visualization, part complicated intellection. And that burns some fuel, man. I was hitting the Met cafeteria like I'd just come in from a long bike ride.

The Met was open late Friday, but by six or so, I was done. Wandered around, saw some of the temporary exhibitions. Did some little moleskine sketches of goodies from the Babylon show, but after three days I was kind of drawn out.

Not quite ready to lay down my arms on these issues, though. Going back with Ann Marshall on Tuesday and possibly Wednesday as well. St. Bridget might be calling again.

Moleskine moment

2009-02-14T16:58:00.003-05:00

Every now and then I have an OK subway session. I think this is my favorite moleskine spread since I started doing these little subway sketches almost two years ago.

100 Hands 8-24 (February Obsession Edition)

2009-02-14T16:37:00.008-05:00

Above: hand studies done on the plane either to or from Berlin (can't remember, didn't label).

Below: either the dullest or the most interesting page I've posted here yet. Spent a couple of hours at Chelsea Market doing mostly pretty boring sketches of people. Started packing up to go, realized that the ink was still wet on some of the sketches. Rather than ruin them by closing the sketchbook on them before they'd finished drying, I kept drawing for another twenty minutes or so.

Instead of continuing to do the usual figure/costume thing, I got interested in one little detail of the passersby: the way they hold their hands while walking. Like everything else about sketching reality, it turns out to be more and more variable the longer you look. Leads to totally obsessive thinking... I literally couldn't tell you one thing about any of the people I looked at except what their hands were doing.

Loose fingers, clenched fingers, all kinds of angles relative to the wrist. Very hard to capture as they whip by... but a really interesting drawing/looking experience I hadn't been expecting. Coming up for air at the end was like waking out of the oddest nap ever.

Because these are little and pretty sloppy, I'm only giving each hand partial credit on the 100 Hands countdown.

Berlin sketches

2009-02-08T16:59:00.008-05:00

Less drawing time than I might have hoped on this trip. Despite jetlag, couldn't resist this fragment at the Altes Museum. Below, killing time at the airport.

Yes, everyone really did look this out-of-sorts.

Berlin: Pergamon Museum

2009-02-08T14:04:00.008-05:00

When 19th-century German archaeologists got their plunder on, they just didn't didn't stop until the job was done. This is a two-story market gate from a town called Miletus; I couldn't even photograph the enormities they carried off from Pergamon, the town that gives this museum its name... it was basically a temple half the size of the Parthenon.

Biggest fun, though is the Ishtar Gate from Babylon. This is only a partial view of what's actually only a portion of the original gate. It's still ginormous:

In a lapse I can only credit to jet lag, I missed getting close-ups of the repeated images of the god Marduk, who is represented by this crazy snake/cat hybird with bird feet and a scorpion tail. Oh, wait... as usual, Flickr's got my back.

On the other hand, I did get some nice photos of the processional avenue that led to the gate. It's not every decorating scheme that can get snarling lions and daisies to cooperate this well.

It think it only works because the lions are snarling with so much conviction. They clearly mean it; the daisies won't be enough to save you.

The backgrounds behind the lions alternate ultramarine and turqoise; the yellow holds everything together. It's not the first color scheme you'd think of to suggest divinely sanctioned royal power but when you're standing in the middle of it, I think you buy what they're selling.

Studio sketches: girl characters

2009-01-28T02:09:00.007-05:00

In between a family thing that took up most of last week, finishing the newest round of Capital Mysteries art (coming soon on the other blog) and getting ready for a quick work trip (yes, more airport sketches likely next week), I haven't had much time to draw and post. But took the day yesterday to play around a little with the idea of girl characters. Some are more realistic, some are more imaginary, all are drawn out of my head trying to use some of what I've been focusing on in the subway & street sketches.

It was a fun day; this is just a little of what I came up with. I wanted to end with a little challenge, so after a late dinner, I just drew a bunch of ovals on a blank sheet and tried to come up with a nice variety of faces.

Another good challenge would be to draw this many ovals and try to make the same face in as many different expressions as possible. Maybe on the plane to Berlin. It's going to be a long flight.

Subway sketches

2009-01-28T02:07:00.002-05:00

100 Eyes 13-16

2009-01-28T02:00:00.002-05:00

Drawn live on the subway

Chelsea Market 1.10.09 (brush pen)

2009-01-10T16:33:00.006-05:00

Top row, just brush pens; bottom row, ballpoint pen first. I think the latter looks better on the page and the former better onscreen...

Chelsea Market 1.10.09

2009-01-10T16:30:00.003-05:00

Sketching is becoming a regular feature of my grocery shopping. Uncomposited scan of one page, layered color in Photoshop.

Subway, 1.7.09

2009-01-10T16:27:00.002-05:00

I don't think everyone was in this foul a mood, really. Just me.

Chelsea Market 1.4.09

2009-01-10T16:26:00.003-05:00

Brand-new sketchbook, brand-new year. Composite of images from two different pages.

100 Eyes #5-12

2009-01-10T16:22:00.003-05:00

Killing time the Old Reliable Macintosh shop waiting area. Some of these are drawn from life, others out of my head.

First Bike Ride of 2009!

2009-01-04T00:31:00.005-05:00

Up the West Side, once around Central Park. That earns me one (1) Bethesda Fountain:

About a ten-mile round trip. After I get some better cold-weather biking gear I ought to be able to do better than that.

Barred Owl

2009-01-03T02:06:00.007-05:00

Sometimes it's fun just to go whole hog with the graphite. I laid this out a couple of years ago for my mom's birthday and never got around to doing it; I ran across it a week or so ago and decided it would make a nice quiet-time project in between holiday runnings-around. Done from a photo in this utterly wonderful book.

Detail:

New toys for Christmas!

2009-01-01T17:48:00.007-05:00

Got a new pair of Japanese brush pens for Christmas (thanks Walter!), one with black ink and the other with a water well. Tried 'em out at the laundromat yesterday. Very quickly found out that the black ink is water-soluble, which lets me mix it with the walnut ink from the pen I've already been using. Very good change-up from the ballpoint pen I've been using.

Ballpoint pen and walnut ink

2009-01-01T17:44:00.003-05:00

Fooling around with the brush pen on the plane to Cleveland over Christmas.

JFK sketches Dec. 22

2009-01-01T17:37:00.005-05:00

Drawn at JFK, waiting for my sister and her kids to arrive from Paris for Christmas. Trying a little Photoshop color to break the monotony of pen on white paper.

Official book blog now up and running

2008-12-17T20:37:00.006-05:00

Studio Hermit now has a younger brother with a more outward, professional orientation. Have a look.

Moleskine Miscellany

2008-12-17T20:03:00.010-05:00

More moleskine drawings, fresh since the last time I posted from this sketchbook. The image below is a composite of OK bits from otherwise so-so pages.

Since these are all starting to look too much alike, I decided to use today's session (laundry day, so street drawing) to try some new materials:

The ink I've been meaning to try forever; the brush pen is something James Gurney talked about on his blog a while back and which looked interesting and convenient (he uses it with clear water when doing watercolor, which I also want to try at some point). My maiden effort was kind of a mess:

Yeah... mess. On the other hand, there are a lot of small moments in them that are OK (click to see originals... I left them a little bigger than usual). The brush pen is very strange: the handle is a flexible water well connected to the brush. You control the amount of ink that's flowing through the brush by controlling the amount of pressure you put on the handle. It took me a while to get the hang of it. Also, the paper in the moleskine was not very receptive - it kept giving me this weird waxy reaction - but that might have been oil from my hand transferring to the paper while I was doing the underlying pen work.

At any rate, with holiday travel coming up, it'll be good to have some new toys for airport and train station waiting. And it'll be good for me to have another way to keep my hand in wet media while finishing the charcoal drawings for the current book.

Word of the Day: Ushanka!

2008-12-11T15:22:00.004-05:00

"Ushanka" is one of those Russian furry ear-flap hats. I learned it this week from a New Yorker article about shopping. This character is named Budge; he lives on Pluto. I dreamed him up for a project that never happened but at least now I know what his headgear is called. Pen & ink, graphite on paper.

Playing well with others

2008-12-02T20:35:00.007-05:00

So what happens when three illustrators and an editor aren't ready for the evening to end once a certain local bookstore's holiday party is over? Why, a trip to the Old Town Bar, naturally, and a four-handed game of Exquisite Corpse. The upside-down head on the upper right figure? I totally meant to do that...

Retirement Party

2008-12-02T19:51:00.009-05:00

A little bit of staff turnover here at Team Tim: two old standbys, longtime reliables Scanner and Printer are moving on. In addition, the Cube (probably the last member of its tribe to hold a full-time job) has been slowly moving of late towards its new role as Computer Emeritus.

Maybe people who upgrade more often than I do - or who don't work by themselves all day long - don't get sentimental about peripherals. Well, phooey on them. I say... tribute time! The printer produced many, many mailers in its day that scared up the jobs that kept a roof over my head in lean times. The manuscripts of the last seven or eight years' worth of books have entered the world through its paper tray. The scanner has not only been a good and valuable workshop tool; the last five (at least) volumes of the Capital Mysteries series have been published using scans from its flatbed.

It would feel ungrateful not to mark this occasion a little.

***************************************

There. Marked.

Please join me in welcoming the new Team Tim:

They have very big USB ports to fill.

100 Eyes 3 & 4

2008-11-26T09:45:00.006-05:00

Same source material as the ink wash drawings below; graphite on paper.

Ink wash, newspaper photos

2008-11-26T09:25:00.009-05:00

The list of media I've never tried includes all sorts of obvious things: oil paint, etching... but ink wash? Had a spare afternoon yesterday to fool around with it, using some newspaper photos. It's hard... everything they say about watercolor that's only sort of true (no going back, unforgiving) really is true here. Most of what I came out with was a total mess; these were the best of the bunch.

North American Bird Hall at AMNH

2008-11-20T16:47:00.005-05:00

Short drawing expedition with Ann to the American Museum of Natural History. She was working on elephants but the crowds in African Mammals were too much for me... plus, I looked into the dusty glass eyes of the antelopes and decided that I wasn't in a mammal mood. So, up the stairs, around the balcony, through the sad fluorescent morgue of New York State wildlife and into the North American birds. Taxidermy up there looks a little scabby up close, but plenty to draw. Magpie, osprey head, and I forget which kind of hawk. The feet on the hawk are too big. Ballpoint pen on paper.

More from North American Bird Hall at AMNH

2008-11-20T16:34:00.009-05:00

Peregrine falcon chicks and marsh hawk.

Untitled storybook drawing 1

2008-11-10T15:50:00.004-05:00

Both of this drawing and the one below it are a little rough around the edges because I haven't drawn anything like this in ages. I miss doing oldey-timey rock-and-forest storybook stuff... a little time in Germany brings out the Grimm in me. Or maybe it was hanging out with these guys... Ball point pen on paper, drawn on the plane ride back from Germany.

Untitled storybook drawing 2

2008-11-10T15:25:00.013-05:00

Drawn at the Hamburg Airport while Continental Airlines promised us a new plane. After twelve hours they gave up and sent us all to a hotel for the night. Ballpoint pen on paper.

Security line at the Hamburg Airport

2008-11-10T15:22:00.005-05:00

5:30 in the morning; the sun wasn't up but I was. So were these people and about ten thousand others. Ballpoint pen on moleskine.

100 Hands 3-7

2008-11-10T15:18:00.006-05:00

Ballpoint pen on paper; one more time-waster on the flight home from Germany.

Bremen

2008-11-09T14:20:00.007-05:00

In Bremen for work, so not enough time to draw. But a couple of early hours and late ones to look around the old city center and scout subjects for next time...

Hamburg Airport, broken plane

2008-11-09T14:10:00.006-05:00

Drawn while standing in a very long, very slow line while an entire airplane's worth of passengers got rebooked. Got a seat on a flight tomorrow and a hotel room tonight. This, my first-ever remote blog post, is courtesy of the hotel's free wireless Internet-- thank you Marriot Courtyard! Image not my usual tidy scan: shot with camera and uploaded with no retouching, rearranging or prettying-up. Ballpoint pen on moleskine.

News Flash: Obama Elected, Early-Morning Subway Commuters Still Grumpy

2008-11-05T13:15:00.004-05:00

Ballpoint pen on moleskine.