the thick and the thin of it

From sketches I made at the Department of Public Safety while waiting to renew my driver's license...

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:

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.

I was a dallas jury foreman

I just came back from jury duty. A DUI trial. If you ever get arrested for DUI, do it in some previous decade before the invention of the police car video camera.

Here are some sketches from the two day event. These are NOT desperate criminals, these are Dallas County juror candidates.



The guy on the bottom ended up on the same jury as I. I found it difficult to not stare at this body shape and wonder how it worked.




A big chunk of the first day is spent waiting idly for things to get going.





OK, this guy was a desperate criminal



Our court reporter:



Mr. Prosecutor was hot, but I didn't draw him that way:

mall bunnies

Another trip to the mall, this time to see "How to Train Your Dragon 3D". A bit over-chatty, but pretty good.

Here are the gesture drawings of passers-by. I'm trying to justify spending $10 on a movie by getting drawing practice in on the same trip.

In the food court...



A well-fed mall cop...



I don't like big butts but they stay still longer than the skinny ones.





There were baby bunnies in a bin...

duck! turtle! duck!

On my excursion to the mall to see "Avatar" today (just getting around to it) I brought my sketchpad along to try some drawings. These are gesture drawings, not studies, this is what I could get in a minute or two before the person walked off.



I'm not real brave about this drawing in public stuff. A person on a bench seen from behind is a frequent theme here...





There really was a duck riding a turtle in the fountain at the mall...


... apparently trying to re-enact scenes from a "B.C." comic strip









How did people go to the mall before the cellphone? There seem to be more people talking on phones than in the stores.





I used to be better at this quick sketching. I need to get back in shape.

strum strum strum

My attempt to capture a guitar in just three lines.

Onward I draw, no?

For Palindrome Day in America I have attempted to draw the defunct Harmon-Ising character "Bosko" looking at himself in a mirror.



This brings to mind a passage in "The Illusion of Life" where the answer to "How do you draw Mickey Mouse's head from the top?" was "Don't try to draw Mickey Mouse's head from the top."

you've got to be a football hero

A quick sketch for an online drawing challenge about five years ago.

Topic: "the warrior"



I knew everyone else was going to be doing medieval fantasy armor so I was going to be different. Still didn't win though!




I think this came out of my year as a high school band director in the microscopic west Texas town of Sanderson. The school only had about 100 students so every boy HAD to go out for football no matter how pathetically scrawny he was. Technically not required but I'm sure the peer pressure was enormous. Of all the boys in my band exactly one was not on the football team and thus able to be in the marching band during football season.

That was Martin (mar-TEEN), about the only person in that whole town with what might be identified as having wit or cleverness. One Friday night he asked me if he could lead the band in the school fight song.

"Sure" I said. The game was just about over. The "Eagles" were losing again. It didn't matter and the band didn't really need a conductor for that anyway.

So, he gets up and does the best parody of conducting I've ever seen. He's giving cues and dynamics and everything, too. Imagine Stokowski doing a fight song for Fantasia but funnier. I wish I had film of it.

I have no idea what became of Martin after that year. I hope he got out of that sleepy town.

three kitty cats

OK, I lied... they're all the same cat.

Drawing Day 2009

A time-lapse drawing for Drawing Day 2009



It's like watching Polaroids develop!

I now return to animation...