Anatomy

Tonight I went to Dorothy's house for some vegetable stew with mashed potatoes, corn bread and feta cheese. We were talking about the Basque Region of Spain and I was asked to pull a Spain travel guide book off the shelf. I also noticed a book called The Anatomy Coloring Book By Wynn Kapit & Lawrence M. Elson. I decided to make an anatomy drawing and Dorothy was nice enough to give me a notebook as I've filled up my last book and not yet replaced it. I chose this neck Illustration because I like how the neck and head are at a somewhat exaggerated angle. I would like to learn more about anatomy as I think it would help me with constructing the human figure when drawing without reference.

I made a few other drawings during our post-dinner walk but this one is my favorite.

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Spooky B-Day

This is my Drawing for Saturday. Jamie was born on Halloween but was celebrating his birth on Saturday because it's a good night to come out and have drinks and stay up late (because most people can sleep in on Sunday). This was a small gift that I gave to Jamie and I drew his name along with some Halloween specific bats and a Jack'O'Lantern.

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Never Happy

This is the doorway of a bar. We were hanging out because Jason and Jim are in town this weekend. I started with the "EXIT" sign, which is very nice. Jason pointed out that I never seem happy with my drawings. I guess I have an idea of what I should be drawing so when I don't do it I become dissatisfied with my work.

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Subway Portraits

Today I rode the subway to work so I had the opportunity to try some subway sketches. It's a pretty amazing exercise as you have to draw the person super quickly unless they happen to be sleeping (as LJ suggested). I enjoyed making the drawings but the entire time I was convinced that everyone was aware that I was drawing them. This made me somewhat paranoid so it was difficult to concentrate on the sketch. The entire time I felt like I was violating the unspoken social contract that you enter into once you step on the subway.

I also like some of the doodles on the top of the page on the left. The weird horned dude is pretty cool. I've never been good at inventing weird creatures but this one seems pretty good.

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Toned

My friend Nate took my drawing and added the tonal values that I was talking about. Hopefully he will email me the PSD so that I can understand exactly how he made the image. I think it looks pretty cool and if I was resourseful enough I coule maybe sell my services as an illustrator.

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Sun 660

This is a drawing of my Polaroid Sun 660 camera. I made the drawing on a the backside of a worksheet from a Bible Literature class that I took in high school. I really like the blue color of the paper, I think it adds quite a bit of life to a relatively simple line drawing. In a stroke of meta genius I decided to take a picture of the completed drawing with the camera that is in the drawing. I admit it's a somewhat stupid ending to a perfectly good drawing. Oh well. I would like to try adding some tonal values to this drawing in photoshop at some point.

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Throwaway

No comment.
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Perspective?

This is a drawing of the bar without perspective. It was drawn on the back side of a large paper bag with a felt tipped pen. I would like to continue this drawing at a later date as I'm happy with how it is turning out.

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Pencil

Whew! Rode my bike 50 miles yesterday with the bike gang and I was pretty tired today. I pulled out a drawing pencil today to try some sketches. I wasn't really feeling too good about this one and the page just turned into some doodles and random things.

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Non-Figurative Design

Oh man, I'm up too late tonight. I didn't draw anything today because I was out riding my bike with some kids who were visting from Chicago. They came to town with the intention of riding 100 miles in one day. I met up with them half way through their ride and finished out the 100 miles.

This is a design that I drew without thinking too much. It looks like the level for a early 80's computer game, Lode Runner or something like that.

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....

Here we have some notes from my visit to MOMA. There were some cool etchings by Lucian Freud and some thumb-nail sketches by Dan Perjouchi that I liked quite a bit. The lower page is the start of a sketch of a building. I realized today that all of my sketches, so far have been short, less than 15 minutes. Soon I would like to make a longer sketch to see how that goes.

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union pool

This is a sketch I made outside of Union Pool in Williamsburg. I rode my bike in from Manhattan looking to meet up with an old friend from A2. I made my way into the bar but was unable to spot my friend so I went back outside and started a sketch. After a few minutes I spotted Sabrina walking past and flagged her down and was able to meet up with my A2 friend. This sketch was in pencil and was quite fast. I'm not crazy about this one but I'm glad I sat down to make a drawing or else I would not have met up with John.

Best.
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Bicycle Built for Two

This is the second day I've seen this bicycle parked outside my office and I love it so much I decided I would make it my daily drawing. It's just a basic cruiser with a front basket and a rear rack but it has a few additions that I find very interesting and very cool. It has a tandem stoker stem with upturned drop bars attached to the seatpost and small foot pegs attached where the rear rack attaches near the dropouts. My best guess is that this set-up is designed to allow a child to ride on the back rack comfortably and safely. Not 100% sure on this one but that's my best guess.

I wish that I had drawn a bit of the background on this one.

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One Month, Yipee...

Well, I've been at it for just over a month now and I'm pretty happy so far. I haven't developed any ideas further than just sketches but I'm glad that I've been able to post something everyday. I would like to draw more bicycles, I was thinking that over the weekend it would be fun to wander around and draw a series of bicycles that are locked to poles, kinda like this book of photos by John Glassie, but in drawing form. We'll see, I have some time before the weekend comes.

These are some doodles and a sketch of some sock monkeys that I made today at work.

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Illustration

There is a website called Illustration Friday and the idea is that each week there is a concept and people create illustrations for that concept. You simply email a link to the location of your illustration and then everyone can go and check out other people's interpretation of the concept. This week the concept is "smitten" and these are the initial thumbnails I've come up with. I'm realizing that illustration takes the skills and ideas of drawing but there is much more to it. I'm also realizing that I'm not so good at illustration. Hopefully I can come up with something that I like and will feel comfortable submitting.

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Express Yourself!

I've been drawing self portraits for many years now but I nearly always draw myself with a blank expression on my face. I suppose it's just the way I look when I'm concentrating on my drawing but I usually end up looking the same. Tonight I thought I would try making some sketches of myself with different expressions. It sounds easy enough but in practice it proves a bit difficult. I quickly discovered that holding the expression for even just a minute is quite difficult. As a result the drawing has to take place quickly or in stages, with ample rest time between sessions of holding the "face" I'm drawing.

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Alexandra

This is a sketch of my friend Alexandra, she was working on the crossword puzzle as I was drawing. I'm happy with how this one turned out, especially hr left hand and arm.

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Home Sweet Home!

This is a sketch I made at a bar on Chrystie just south of Delancy called Home Sweet Home. I like how the drawing moves across the binding of my journal.
The second drawing was of the NCR cash register behind the bar. I'm pretty happy with these two sketchs.

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cross walk

I was waiting to meet up with someone tonight at a street corner and as I was waiting I decided to make some sketches. I was trying to sketch people as they were waiting to cross the street. Often times that ends up being a pretty short amount of time so the sketches are very incomplete and there are only a few.

No worries.
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Looking Up

This is a quick sketch I made while watching the end of the Tigers game. They picked up a second win in the American League Championship Series, the first two games of the series with Oakland (in Oakland!). Anyway, this one was drawn with a regular ballpoint pen which is actually quite smooth and can lay down a few different levels of tone. I want to draw more buildings, I should get some reference photos and do some more detailed drawings so that I can build up a set of mental construction details.

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Dinner Doodles

These are just some doodles that I made while I was eating my dinner. I had a delicious lambburger at Anytime on North 6th.

After my dinner I met up with Tavis to go see the Islands play over at NorthSix. This is a quick sketch of the second opening band, I believe they were named "Socalled" and they were three very distinct looking fellows.

Night.
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Rats Off!

I stopped back at Rififi tonight and was lucky enough to find my sketchbook behind the bar with the bartender. Someone was nice enough to pick it up and turn it in to the lost and found. As a result I'm able to post my October 10th drawing. I started with the head of a mouse and then I decided that it should have a top hat, then a cane one thing lead to another and here we are with "Rats Off To Ya!". It's actually a reference to a strange yet funny show on Adult Swim called Tom Goes to the Mayor where the main character invents a novelty t-shirt with the saying "Rats Off to Ya".

I rest my case.
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Lost and found.

I made it home tonight after a night of live stand up at rififi with Gabe and Jenny and I discovered that I had left my sketchbook at the bar. I'm going to hold off posting in the hopes that I will be able to track down my journal and recover my sketch. Such a downer, I was really hoping to post my drawing, it was a fun one.

I will try to recover my journal tomorrow and then re-post the image. If not I will give a double dose tomorrow evening.

Night.
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Dumbo

This is a dawing of the corrner of Washington and Water in Dumbo. I was a bit frusterated by my drawings in Coney Island last weekend but I'm feeling much better about this one.

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hmph!

I'm pretty tired. This is me.
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Happy Friday!

Today my drawing consists of two care packages that I made for two of my coworkers that had to work late last night. They didn't leave the office until 1 am, as a result they were going to be a bit late getting in today, so I took the oppertunity to make these little bundles of candy with an attached note.

I'm pretty happy with how Lisa's Owl and Caroline's Sock Monkey turned out. It's also fun to give someone a present with a bit of a personal touch.

Happy friday!
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Stand up, stand up!

I went to a comedy variety show called Variety Shac and while I was watching and laughing I tried to make some drawings. This one is a comedian named Kristen Schaal. She was very stationary which made her much easier to draw.

Here is my attempt at drawing Andrea Rosen. She moved around quite a bit and was difficult to sketch but her act was quite funny.

Here is Zach Galifianakis. He also moved around a lot but I was trying to work quickly and not really look at the paper on these little studies. Zach was very funny, a good show and great special guests. I may try to attend next month.

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New Tools

Today after work I went out and picked up some new pens for drawing. I went with the "Le Pen" by Marvy, the Stylist and a Pentel "Sign Pen" in black and orange.

In other news, I had lunch with Darkpony and he was telling my about a open figure drawing class at SVA on wednesdays. He was saying that the have multiple models in a pose at the same time, which sounds pretty interesting. We made tentative plans to attend the class next week, which should be fun. Look for some figure drawings in my post on wedensday.

This is a quick sketch of my room. I started with line, then I tried to work into the curtains with the wider marker. I liked the drawing before adding the marker but I'm not sure about it now. I think I need to work into the shadows more with the marker and bring more dark tones to the whole drawing, not just the curtains.

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Inevitable

So it was inevitable, I don't have a sketch for today, so I'm going to post an old sketch. This one is from May 23, 2001 which was my first quarter as an intern living and working in NYC. As my date and signature says, this sketch was made at Baby Juipter on Orchard & Stanton. I'm not sure if the bar is still there but I believe I was meeting a co-worker. I'm not too crazy about this sketch.

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hmph!

It's somewhat difficult to draw on a bar napkin with a number 2 pencil.

Live and learn.
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Coney Island

I rode my bike to Coney Island this afternoon to enjoy some nice sweater beach weather, do some reading and make some drawings. I've never had much success with drawing a landscape, I never quite know where to put the lines and shapes. I think I also have trouble finding the more important lines that will communicate the scene. Above is my first attempt which made me somewhat discouraged. I decided to stop and read my book, The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil by George Saunders.

This is my second attempt. I'm a bit more pleased with this one but still not too happy or confident when in comes to scenic drawings. Looking at it now I think having a foreground, middle ground and background is important. Then working in more detail in the foreground and less in the middle and background. The thing I couldn't figure out was how to draw the ground. It was basically a sandy beach so I guess I could have drawn little hills and whatnot in the sand. I ran out of energy for this drawing pretty quickly and I really wish I had stuck with it, this one actually could have turned out nice.

So I'll keep forcing myself to draw pictures with a horizon line.
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Rocket Ships!

Hmm. This is a rocket ship. Alexandra drew along with me. She drew the figure in the background.

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