Today (July 31st) is the birthday of JK Rowling and Harry Potter. Therefore it seems like the right day to post this sketch. This was from the Harry and the Potters concert at the library last week. The band is made up of two geeky yet adorable brothers who put on glasses and Gryffindor ties and travel the country singing songs about Harry Potter. I’ve been luck enough to see them twice now. They put on a fun show.
Richard and I recently traveled to Buffalo where his aunt and uncle were kind enough to put us up for a few days. I loved the entire town and was particularly struck by houses, which were colorful and historical and so so so different from the rows and rows of cookie cutter houses here in AZ.
(For the record I hate the term cookie cutter houses.)
Anyway, the houses all had a real sense of history. The room we stayed in had this awesome old chair that I became obsessed with drawing.
The reason I was so drawn to it was because it reminded me so much of this painting by Van Gogh.
I’ve been trying to draw more chairs lately, as well as trees and buildings and other non-human things. I have a bad habit of just drawing people all the time, so I’m trying to make myself branch out. The chairs have been quite a challenge because there are so many angles and you really need to get them right or else it will come out pretty wacky looking. Drawing people doesn’t really pose that problem (although it poses many others). Also chairs usually sit still (unlike people) so it forces me to exercise some patience and take time to study the details.
I’m not big into music. I mean, I like it and all, but I don’t seem to appreciate it as much as everyone else does.
That said, about eight years ago I was walking back from Octoberfest and there was this band playing and they were so awesome that I stopped to watch. The next thing I knew, two hours had gone by and I hadn’t even realized it.
The band is called Traveler and they play all kinds of music inspired by the music of other countries. Gypsy, Celtic, Middle Eastern…stuff like that. When they play outdoors there are usually some belly dancers around. The lead singer, Scott Jeffers, plays the fiddle like nobody’s business, and sometimes he plays other some other cool-looking, instruments too.
The other night we caught them playing at the Dubliner and I did my best to document the experience…
I sketched these out in pencil first, then went back over with a pen. Then I used a couple different grey markers for a quick and dirty wash effect.
I always have a tough time drawing musicians because instruments are pretty intricate looking and if the person moves, even just a little bit, the angle of the instrument completely changes, so I either have to start over, or just fake it.
These guys are especially tough to draw because they have a lot of energy and they move around a lot. I was happy I managed to get anything down at all.
After I got home, I decided to add some color in order to better capture the mood of the evening. So I scanned a couple in and painted them with Corel…
See those fancy stars in the background? I spent a lot of time trying to create something like that in Photoshop. Then, after failing miserably, I discovered that Painter actually has a brush called “sparkly stars” or something like that, which created the exact effect I was looking for.
After I painted this second one, I started to think that it might actually make a better composition if I cropped the lead singer out and left just the guitar players.
Does that bass player look cool as hell or what? I had a lot fun trying to capture his chill posture and the serious expression on his face. I also spent a lot of time on the position of his hands.
Anyway, I still can’t decide which version looks better. But check it out! You can make polls on this blog. Please take my poll and vote for the one you think looks best.
My tentative journey into the world of color continues…
I recently had the pleasure of working with Corel Painter and I never want to go back. Here are a couple of sketches that I scanned and painted using Corel. I tried to give myself a 10 minute time limit in an attempt to create some sort of fresh, dashed off look, but then I got into what I was doing and lost track of time. Each of these probably took about 30 minutes to paint. Having the option to erase mistakes and undo regrets is at once the benefit and the curse of digital painting.
The above drawing is of my husband and my brother at Disneyland. I talked a lot about this and other drawings from that trip in a previous post. In this drawing I committed the sin of mixing moments, resulting in a very unenthusiastic looking Richard and Tanner among a crowd of happy theme park goers. The truth is I actually did the drawing of R&T after a long first day as they were sitting on a bench outside the park waiting for the shuttle to take us back to the hotel. The crowd of people in the middle ground was added here and there as we waited in various lines the next day.
This fountain was in the courtyard of the Sheraton Anaheim where we stayed during our trip. I must have drawn this in the morning on the day that we checked out, as I can’t imagine I would have been willing to sacrifice much Disneyland time on a drawing back at the hotel. I do remember being quite happy with it when I was done, and it was nice to rediscover it again and freshen it up with some fake paint.
So I went back to the Grand Canyon recently and did a handful of campfire drawings. I did the sketching and inking at camp and then colored them with pencil in the car ride home. Actually I only did some of the coloring in the car because (as usual) I got carsick and had to finish the rest at home.
That was easy part. But getting motivated to scan the drawings, that’s a whole different story. The first three drawings scanned with no issues.
But when I went to scan the last one I had some trouble. It came out way too faded…
Everyone just looked pale and sickly, which is not how I colored them. And the sky just looks white. This sometimes happens when I am scanning and it drives me crazy. I attempted to fix it by adjusting the contrast in photoshop to punch up the colors, but then I had to change the brightness as well, which made it come out too dark…
Finally I tried to rescan the drawing altogether (which took an enormous amount of patience on my part) and this time I noticed something that I have never noticed in all my centuries of scanning drawings: the “restore faded color” option. Just put a check mark in the box and wahlah…
You learn something new every day.
Here are my bosses at Zoe’s Kitchen. They’re pretty cool. Not only do they tolerate me and all my weirdness, but they don’t seem to mind it when I sketch them.
A couple weeks ago my husband and I went with his family on a trip north to Flagstaff and the Grand Canyon. We went up there to celebrate my mother-in-law’s birthday, but I have to admit that I had such a great time that I sometimes thought it was my birthday.
Here is the first sketch of the trip. I drew this of Richard while we were having breakfast at the Flagstaff La Quinta, which earns a five-star rating in my book because it has the trifecta:
1) Fitness center 2) Jacuzzi 3) Free breakfast
Additionally, the La Quinta is pet-friendly, which I–being allergic to all creatures great and small–was a little worried about. But the hotel was very clean and I don’t think I sneezed even once. Also, having an elevator open to reveal a beautiful labrador standing there is not the worst way to start your day.
Next came the main purpose of the trip: The Grand Canyon Rail Road!
I am crazy about trains, but have had very few chances to ride them. I have been wanting to ride the Grand Canyon Rail Road forever, so this was a great adventure, as well as a perfect opportunity for sketching.
Here is a sketch of Richard, his ‘rents, and the ‘phews on the train as we rode from Williams to the Grand Canyon. I’ve been working with colored pencil ever since my Rim to Rim trip a couple weeks prior (see this post for more on that). In this sketch I’ve learned to pull back a little on the pencils, using them to splash a bit of color on the drawing, without completely saturating every inch of paper.
Here are a few more quick sketches of the fam on the ride up. That’s my nephew Ethan saying his trademark phrase, “I hungry!”
One of the great things about the Grand Canyon RR is the on board entertainment. There are musicians, train robbers, and lawmen. We chatted for a while with this sheriff who turned out to be from my home state of South Dakota.
And what’s a train ride without a little cowboy music?
Once we got to the Grand Canyon we had about three hours to hang out before we had to get on the train to ride back. We enjoyed a fantastic lunch at a place on the south rim called “El Tovar” where my Arnold Palmer was so beautiful I had to document it.
Then we walked the rim trail and enjoyed the beautiful weather until it was time to catch the train back to Williams. I spent much of the ride back coloring the drawings that I did on the ride up.
The next day we drove back to Phoenix by way of Sedona where we stopped for lunch at a place called Shugrue’s (which was amazing by the way). I did this awful sketch while we waiting for our food.
The girl in the glasses is my sister-in-law Christa and these sketches do NOT do her justice. She is a beautiful woman and yet for some reason she is one of the most challenging people to draw. I have been trying and failing to capture her likeness for over ten years now. Some day I will get it right.
On the plus side, I don’t have to worry about forgetting the name of that restaurant. That is another benefit of carrying a sketchbook everywhere you go. When you go to someplace great you can write down the name so you won’t forget. I have also noted “get the quiche’.”
Please note that I did NOT do the following drawing. I found this in a newspaper in Flagstaff that was talking about a local exhibit and I found it so inspiring that I cut it out and pasted it into my sketchbook for later reference. The artist’s name is Susan J. Klein. I have since located her website which features many other lovely pieces.
At some point during the trip Christa told me about a crayon holder that her friend made for her kids, which inspired me to draw up these plans for a new pen and pencil holder for myself. Since I like to draw on the go I am always trying to figure out easy and efficient ways to carry around all my stuff (or my “instruments” as my boss Kathy calls them).
I have since purchased some fabric, and with some sewing tips from my pal Sharon, I have begun to make this new and improved instrument holder. I haven’t finished it yet but when I do I will post some photos and report on it’s effectiveness.
Thank you Paula and Jim, for such a great vacation.
This past weekend I joined up with about 20 other people to hike the Grand Canyon from the South Rim to the North Rim. I brought along my sketchbook with the hopes of doing a few sketches to remember the experience by and came back with more than I expected.
As I’ve stated before, I have never been very comfortable with using color. This past year it has been my goal to work with it more, and I’ve made a few attempts with watercolor that came out okay, but I’m still having a tough time. One of the challenges is that I am usually drawing on the go: in restaurants, museums, on buses, airplanes, or at some kind of festival. It gets real tricky trying to do watercolors in these settings, especially since I am pretty awkward with it to begin with.
So this weekend I tried something different. A couple months ago a co-worker randomly interofficed a small set of German colored pencils to me, so I brought them on the trip and took a bold step into the world of color.
These aren’t masterpieces by any standard, but they are definitely important drawings for me. I’ve written before about lightbulb drawings–the products of moments when I somehow become enlightened by an idea and reach a new skill level. These drawings represent the time I found my way into working with color.
The most important drawing from the weekend is this one that I did from the deck of the North Rim Lodge.
Not only is it in color, but it’s also a landscape, which is something else I struggle with. This is probably one of the hardest sketches I’ve ever done. The challenge was figuring out how to take a very complicated landscape and simplify it to fit within the limitations of time, color, and paper size, but also still make it recognizable for what it was. I actually started and abandoned two other sketches before I finally produced this one.
The whole weekend was pretty great. I did a ton of hiking, met a bunch of cool people, and had some fun times around the campfire. But coming home with these drawings ensured that it will be unforgettable.
Here are a few more of my timid attempts at using color. I rigged a small watercolor palette that is portable and fairly easy to use with the idea being that I could do watercolor sketches on the go. Of course I did all three of these in the comfort of my own home. So I guess I am still working up the guts to do those watercolors on the go.
The problem is that I spend a lot of time on http://www.urbansketchers.org, which showcases the work of some pretty dang amazing sketchbook artists from all over the world. Seeing all these new masterpieces pop up everyday is both inspiring and intimidating.
sketchbookfactory 