A side note - I realize that this image is a little blurry and a little on the yellow side. This is because I took a photo in my apartment with overhead light on a dark, rainy afternoon using the camera on my iPhone. I cleaned it up as best I could in Photoshop, but it still looks a little rough. Any suggestions on how I can get better photos of my work, short of investing in a better camera or some fancy studio lights, would be much appreciated.
Yesterday I went down to the Seattle Asian Art Museum for a little sketching with a friend. It's always nice to draw with a friend, both because you can see how another person approaches similar problems and also because it reduces my tendency to mutter to myself while I draw, which means I get fewer suspicious stares from museum security guards who probably all think I'm about to snap and start drawing mustaches on the thousand year-old sculptures (in fairness, there were a few that really would look better that way). Anyway, the top one is a detail in ink of a piece titled "Buddha and Two Bodhisattvas" (sorry, I didn't have the time or energy to draw the bodhisattvas, so the Buddha is all you get) from Pakistan in the 2nd-3rd century. The bottom drawing was done with charcoal pencil from a near life-size Chinese sculpture labeled as "Monk at the Moment of Enlightenment" from the 14th century.
There is a tragic end note to this expedition. My oatmeal sketch book from Utrecht finally gave up the ghost midway through the day with about eight pages left blank. The paper is fine, but a year or so bouncing around in my Dickies bag has left the spiral binding in a state where the book is now impossible to open or close without damaging the pages. I'm really fond of these sketchbooks and I went ahead and ordered another one from Utrecht, this time hardbound to avoid a repeat of the Tragic Death of the Spiral Binding. I should note that I am no way employed by Utrecht Art, but if they wanted to send me a few bucks for the endorsement I wouldn't complain.
Yesterday I headed out with the Seattle Sketchers Meetup group to the Woodland Park Zoo. As I was making my way there on a gorgeous Saturday (one of the first Seattle has enjoyed in quite a while), I had visions of pulling out my skecthbook on a comfy bench in the shade, somewhere with an unobstructed view of a majestic animal that wasn't moving around too much. Imagine my surprise when I showed up around 1:00 and discovered that the place was insanely crowded and that any spot where one might get a decent view of an elephant or a gorilla was completely mobbed by children and their parents who were all jostling for a look. This led to me spending a good part of my visit wandering around in circles looking for something to draw, a quest that ended in the reptile house where I happened upon a chuckwalla that was kind enough to strike a dramatic pose while I sketched.
The more observant among you may notice that this creature is looking a little puffy, but I assure you this is how it really was. At the time, I thought this was because it had just eaten some sort of mid-sized rodent (I often looked this way after meals when I lived in New Orleans), but I was later told that the chuckwalla can puff itself up to ridiculous proportions as a way to scare off predators. I hope this doesn't mean that I did anything to offend it. I think it's much more likely that all of the children blatantly ignoring the "do not tap on glass" sign were to blame for its agitated state.
How great is it to live within easy walking distance of Volunteer Park? That was a rhetorical question, of course. The relative greatness of proximity to enjoyable places is a very difficult thing to measure, although I'm sure someone at Google is working on it. The highlight of any visit to Volunteer Park is the Seattle Asian Art Museum, which has a lot of interesting work on the walls (I'm a big fan of the Japanese wood blocks) and tons of sculpture just begging to be sketched. This particular piece is of horse from the Tang period (insert astronaut joke here), dated around the 7th or 8th century. Thinking about how much time that really is and the fact that some human being's hands actually made this thing that I am standing in front of more than 1,000 years later makes me feel totally insignificant. I hope some piece of my life stays around that long, even if it's just the styrofoam I throw in the landfill.
Note: I realize that the bottom of the stand is falling off the page in a really odd way. This is because I violated one of the first rules that any beginning art teacher will tell you and did not fully plan out my composition before I started work. Mea culpa.
I've recently started taking a portrait drawing class at Seattle Central Community College. Except for the fact that I had a terrible time finding the room the first night (who knew that the art building was on the other side of the street from the rest of the college?) I've been really enjoying it. Drawing portraits from a model is a vastly different experience from drawing from a photo or even a self-portrait in a mirror. There is real geometry when the head is right there in front of you that just doesn't show up when you're working from a 2-dimensional image.
The first drawing is from an exercise we did in class with a model named Stanley, who did an admirable job of holding the same expression for two solid hours. The second one is a self-portrait I did in front of my bathroom mirror where, true to form, I have captured an expression that makes it look like I'm thinking about destroying something small and cute. Someday I'll learn how to smile and draw at the same time. I also realize that the eyes are wildly mis-placed, but I decided to post the drawing anyway. That's the sort of painfully honest approach that we here at Revenge of the Pencil Enterprises have always pursued despite the protestations of friends, family, and legal counsel.
