I was in a square in Portland sketching this statue of Abe Lincoln when these drummer guys came up to me and looked at the drawing and told me a little background about the statue. They said that it was done towards the end of the Civil War when all the stress and pressure of the war and his personal life really started to show. In the statue you could see that he was more haggard and worn down than in most depictions of him.
Later on I did a quick gesture sketch of the drummer guy.
These are from a snowboarding trip I took with friends. We had a great time and a lot of laughs. I don’t often put word bubbles into sketches, but I did this time because I thought they helped capture the spirit of the trip.
My brother won this stuffed dog on the Santa Monica Pier in the summer of 07. He loves playing those games where you win a stuffed animal, but he’s more into the game than the prize, so he gave the dog to me. The summer of 07 was the summer of Harry Potter, and our vacation was planned specifically around the release of the 7th book, so I named it Thestral, after the skeletal horses that are invisible to everyone except those who have witnessed death.
After I graduated college I volunteered for a couple years at the Foundation for Blind Children. I helped out in a classroom of toddlers. Mostly I would just play with them and sing and rock them in a swing. One time I went on a field trip with them to a farm.
All the kids had visual impairments as well as other physical limitations, so most of them were in those full body wheelchair things. It was common for some of the kids to have short seizures during the day. You would think it would be depressing, but I really enjoyed volunteering there, and the kids were sweet.
This girl’s name was Yom and she was from a big family that had recently moved here from another country. She was a beautiful little girl.
I did this drawing of some of my workout buddies one night when we went out to dinner after class. The guy in the middle, Ralph, took a look at this one after I was done and said, “Is that Milhouse?”
I said “Who’s Milhouse?”‘
And he said “That looks like Richard Milhouse Nixon.”
I said “No that’s you!”
I may not have captured Ralph’s likeness perfectly, but that salt and pepper shaker look pretty damn good.
By the way, the woman on the left is our awesome fitness trainer, Louise. And the woman on the right is Monique, a dear friend who suddenly passed away a few months after the night of this outing. I am so glad I did this drawing. Had I known, I would have done a hundred more.
I did these sketches at the Body Worlds exhibit, which is actually the perfect place to bring a sketchbook because Life Drawing is all about studying the construction of the body and learning the bones and muscles and all that.
I remember reading about how renaissance artists would try to learn more about human anatomy in order to better render the figure. The book The Agony and the Ecstasy talked about how Michelangelo tried so hard to get his hands on a cadaver so that he could study it, and how difficult that was because back then they weren’t all that cool about cutting up dead bodies.
We’ve got it so easy nowadays.
My library recently had a fantastic exhibit of works from two Chinese artists. One was a painter and the other a sculptor. Both were excellent, but I was particularly drawn to the sculptures. For the duration of the exhibit I spent most of my breaks in the gallery sketching.
One day there was a young Chinese man taking pictures of the sculptures. After a few minutes another guy, who was with the Chinese guy, noticed me sketching and said, “That’s him. That’s the artist.” I was like, “What, no way!”
Then the Chinese guy/artist (who’s name is Chen Xuebo) came over to me and excitedly gestured toward my sketches. He didn’t speak much English but he was obviously very flattered to find someone doing sketches of his work. I tried in my (own awkward way) to tell him how much I admired his sculptures, and he enthusiastically smiled and nodded, and took a couple pictures of me sketching his sculpture. Although we didn’t speak the same language, we shared a nice moment of artist love.
To the naked eye this may look like a rather unimpressive simple drawing, but I am quite proud of this one. I have a really tough time capturing people with their mouth open, or mid action, but this one came out pretty well. By the way, he ate that entire container of yogurt in one sitting. 
sketchbookfactory 