Ashley’s new favorite hat

For Christmas, niece Bailee received a hand-made (with love!) hat from Aunt Joni. Ashley really liked it and was, dare I say, jealous. For giggles, she pretended like she might be taking it with her when we pulled out. We snapped a picture and, instead of drawing the cafeteria the other morning I sketched out Ashley enjoying Bailee’s gift. 😀

Joni loved that Ashley loved it, and we’re eagerly awaiting the mail man’s arrival. He’s supposed to be delivering a hat of her very own some time later today. 😀

Mini Sketches

I’m trying to instill the habit of sketching whenever I get the chance. The mini sketchbooks are coming in really handy, as I can carry one in my pocket just about everywhere we go. Here are a few of the scenes I’ve jotted down over the last couple of weeks:

Ashley at the coffee shop:

While Ashley ran to the restroom I caught the neighbors on paper.

Another quick stop at a coffee shop before heading to the hospital (you may notice a recurring them, both in subject and locale 😀 )

Still Ashley, but we’re waiting for our Thai food to arrive. Delicious!
Sitting at another coffee shop, this is the building across the street.

On an afternoon spent with a friend, we ended up at a tire shop to repair a flat. This fella was passing his time in the waiting room…

Back in the Cafeteria

After the fun of the holidays it was time to head back to the hospital once more. I’m still torn between wanting to work fast and capture figures and trying to get enough detail to differentiate specific people. Here are a few of the characters who came through the line one morning:

The gentleman on the right is a regular, I’ve seen him quite a few of the mornings I’ve been there. This sketch covered a couple of mornings – I drew the diners, flag and column one morning and the next added in the rest of the details.

Here I knew that I only had a couple of minutes, but that’s the beauty of the pocket sketchbook – I can draw no matter how short of a time!

These are the same two guys, chatting with another of the regulars.

Capturing Christmas via Sketches

In my Christmas stocking I found a pack of three small Moleskine sketchbooks – which I’d been wanting for some time, but not badly enough to buy for myself. Perfect!

We packed up the RV and drove to Matt and Brittney’s for a Christmas family get together. While there, I sketched a few scenes – a couple in my regular sketchbook but mostly in my new travel-sized ones!

For reference:

The nieces turn into iZombies as soon as they can use their phones/iPods.

Watching “Elf” on Christmas Eve.

Perhaps the only image of the Christmas tree before our favorite hooligans “re-arranged” all of the presents.

Proud (but tired) parents watching the opening of the presents.

Here’s a quick sketch of the view out the front window. What a lovely place!It was far too short of a visit, as always!

More sketching homework

After my last sketching assignment, I was ready for the next one. Both because I wasn’t please with the fifth sketch and because I wanted to move on. And so, my next bit of homework was to draw an image using 5-7 continuous lines, one for each major structure. Time was limited to 15 minutes.

I adjusted my script accordingly so that the time was accurate, and set about to work on the sketch. Didn’t take a photo of the line-drawing only as the timer was running and I wanted to get my darks in place. Here’s the finished sketch:

Sketching homework

I love the look of “urban sketching” which is the act of going out and recording the world around you from direct observation. One of my old sketchbooks has drawings of classmates in highschool, captured while in class. At least they were paying attention! 😀 So, apparently, I’ve been doing a version of urban sketching since before it was a thing. (Not that it’s some new concept…)

While researching, I ran across this post on Citizen Sketcher with sketching assignments. Since I’m working on getting back in practice, I figured why not!

The assignment that I worked on is to create 5 small sketches using a single, continuous line in each one. Set a timer to limit each sketch to 4 minutes. Afterward, go back with a brush pen to add dark shadows (which I didn’t have, so I used a dying sharpie instead).

Instead of going out on location, I found photos online to work from and wrote a script that automatically displayed them for four minutes, one after the other, with a 5 second break in between. So my focus was on sketching and not having to worry about the clock.

The initial line drawings:

Then with darks added:

Sketching at Starbucks

Stopped at a convenient Starbucks to pass some time and caught some baristas working and patrons in line. The one girl was pretty bundled up – long sleeves, vest, apron, fluffy scarf.

And some friends chatting and reading over their coffees.

Eventually the crowd thinned out and I ended up drawing my table and sketchbook of sketches (as seen in the very top picture). For whatever reason that always strikes me as silly and makes me smile. 😀

Speed gesture drawing

Since I’ve been drawing people in the cafeteria, I realize that my speed needs some work. Even in drawing classes I struggled with gesture drawing, trying to put in too much detail in a very short amount of time. For practice, I found SketchDaily.net, which allows me to set a timer (ie: 30 seconds) and work through sketching people very quickly.

Additionally, since I’ve got a collection of partial sketchbooks from over the years, this gives me the opportunity to finally finish them up! I believe that I inherited the concept that you don’t get rid of unfinished notebooks from my grandparents (learned from growing up in the Great Depression and WWII).

I finally finished the sketchbook that I put together in one of my first college art classes (from the remnants I’d had floating around from years before). Yay! Next up were a few pieces of loose printer paper.