Soup's On

My wife made soup last night and, while I wasn't much help in the preparation, I did my best to capture her delicious efforts in my sketchbook.

Figure Drawing at Fair Grinds Cafe

Fair Grinds in mid-city has a figure drawing session on Thursday nights. I went down last week and had a great time drawing from a model for the first time in many moons, although I had to leave before the long pose. Still, I think I got a few good ones in from the 5-10 minutes poses. Note for anyone who might be viewing this page at work: these are drawings of a model posing without the burden of clothing.

Sketching in the French Quarter

Steeple of Saint Louis Cathedral.




A doorway in the courtyard at the Royal Grounds Cafe, which is by far my favorite place to get coffee in the Quarter.


This stern looking gentleman of the law was not actually present today, at least not in the flesh. This is the statue of Justice Edward Douglas White on the steps of the courthouse on Royal Street.

Watercolor still life

Here are a couple of attempts at a watercolor still life with some apples and my wife's extremely stylish green dress. On the second attempt I decided to try to work in a little ink to draw out some of the lines. I should note that I did this in a couple of sittings and that I had to do the last few shadows from memory after the apples started to smell a little funny and I was forced to throw them away in the interest of olfactory happiness throughout my household.

Watercolor

I've been taking a watercolor workshop over the past few weeks with Joan DaGradi (see her blog), a wonderful local painter who has also turned out to be a really excellent teacher. I'm still getting a handle on the materials and trying to find ways to keep my paintings from degenerating into untamed maelstroms of dripping chaos, but I've really been enjoying it. Included below are a couple of my early efforts. The self portrait was done in front of the mirror while the hippo, sadly, was not drawn from life. Someday I will head down to the zoo and try that for real.