the LEGO panic of ought '11

More fast gesture drawings. 

Five of the people in a gi-normous line waiting to get into the LEGO store at the mall yesterday:

Several of these are attempts to capture a walking pose:

These people were not going anywhere:

more heads, no agnes

Faces seen at yet another chamber music concert.

gone in 60 seconds

For what is probably the fifth time in 20 years, I'm attempting to do Kimon Nicolaides' book "The Natural Way to Draw".  I'll never get around to three hours of drawing with a nude model every day but I'm aiming to get the flavor the curriculum.

A big part of it is lots of quick gesture drawings.  Behold, the first batch:

putting on their concert face

Seen at a cello recital today...

basically Beethoven

I went to one of the "Basically Beethoven" concerts at Fair Park on Sunday.

First up was 16 year-old pianist Sahun Hong, playing music by Handel, Schubert and Pokofiev which was basically not by Beethoven. 

The main event was Dallas Symphony violinist Gary Levinson and pianist Daredjan Baya Kakouberi performing Beethoven's F major and C minor sonatas for piano and violin which were entirely by Beethoven.

I'm afraid these are not very good likenesses of the violinist.  Male, 40-something, trim, gray fly away hair... you get the basic idea.

new sketchbook, old art

It was "free" day at the Dallas Museum of Art.  They actually have a  pretty nice collection.  I saw Van Goghs and Monets and Picassos and even a sculpture by Degas.  I didn't know he did sculpture. 

Mostly I looked but I did sketch two objets d'art.

A Greek funerary figure, c. 330 BC.  His casual pose would work better if he had hands and feet and a head.

Henry Moore's "Reclining Mother and Child" 1976.  It's a close call but I think he did better on the mother than on the child.

the last page

It took me six years but I finally filled up a sketch book.  To close it out I tried landscape again.

 

 

 

 

 

Sunset-lit clouds across White Rock Lake.

Interior of boathouse at the lake.

This drawing is from last year but shows the boathouse across the water on the left.

Good-bye old sketch book!  

I'll try to do better with the next one!

mice are nice

severed heads

I just drew heads where I found them today.

humpbacks

More sketches of hunched-over people, and others, at the mall.

mall creatures great and small

 "Jungle Jim" was at the mall showing children his collection of strange crawling animals.
 

This is an albino frog. You can tell because he's white.

 

Tired shopper, dorsal view.

My finest drawing of a duck, so far.

fiction cats

I'm reading Nancy Beiman's storyboarding book "Prepare to Board." 

One of the tasks is to make up four different cat characters.

movin' on up

March 18. More escalator riders at the mall...

 

 

At auction this next drawing will be called "Man trying to find 'YOU ARE HERE' dot on mall directory."

 

 The acoustics of a shopping mall are such that you really can't tell what the pianist is playing, but he looked like he was hitting the right notes.

 

Tree-top view from the train platform as I wait for it to whisk me back home...

my new year's resolution...

...to draw something every day didn't get very far.

In junior high shop class I was pretty good at drawing mechanical objects, but those were very rectangular objects.

 

I'm pretty sure my cat had six legs on the day I drew him or I would not have drawn him with six legs...

 

You want deep?  I'll give you deep.  This is a drawing of the camera that was used to take a picture of this drawing of the camera that I use to take pictures of these drawings..

 

I drew these in blue pencil thinking I would go back someday and refine them.  Yup.