Category: Blog

Stephen

Nina (doubles)

Kate

Arthur

I pulled some old drawing pads out of a closet to consolidate with others. Of course, I rifled through the pages to get my bearings on the content. I’m usually looking for blank pages—I often leave the first and last pages empty—and hoping to be pleasantly surprised by something in there. Usually, I find one good drawing and the rest not so good. Or there might be a book where I was really hitting my stride and have several good ones in a single pad. At the bottom of the stack was a Strathmore 400 Series pad of recycled paper, which stood out because of its green cover. What I discovered was a lot of unused pages and a few drawings from 3-hour poses where I was trying a more formal process. I was reminded that as much as I like quick, expressive drawings, I do miss those longer studies and used to wish that I could do even longer ones.

It looks like I committed one of the cliché sins of figure drawing: making the feet to short. The thicker, heavier line at the feet indicates to me that I must have realized this and double-checked everything, essentially redrawing it. So, either I measured it wrong more than once, or the silhouette of the feet is correct, in which case perhaps some more skillful line work that demonstrates the foreshortening might fix this.

It looks like I spent a lot of time on the block-in and didn’t have time to adequately finish the solid line work, as evidenced by the arms, one of the legs, and most obviously that hand. Too, none of the creases in the torso have been redrawn. Though it was years ago, I do recall just now as I’m writing this, that I abandoned any further line work in order to make sure I mapped the primary shadows.

One page from each of the past three years. The first image, from early 2020, was just before the shutdown. It was the last time I went out in public for some time. Most restaurants turned to curbside takeout or contactless delivery. The couple depicted at the bottom of the page were traveling.

As much as I love sketching in bars, restaurants, coffee shops, I always feel self-conscious and. Have a difficult time relaxing. no one has ever acted bothered by my activity, but it does feel somewhat intrusive. But I’m not likely to be asking anyone’s permission any time soon.