Albatross!

I'm going to dedicate this one to my dad, as he was so fond of the Monty Python skit with the albatross that he was prone to wandering around the house shouting "Albatross!" at random intervals. This one was done with the beloved brush pen and a couple of ink washes from a photo on the National Geographic web site.

Another Batch of Portraits. Consistency is For Chumps.

Here are three more recent entries from Julia Kay's Portrait Party (https://www.flickr.com/groups/portraitparty). I generally do these pretty quickly and use them as a way to play around with different materials. Pencil? Sure. Pen? You bet. Ink wash? Why not?

Me Vs. Rubens

Rubens carries a lot of weight around our house, mainly because I am married to an art historian who has spent a sizable portion of her life studying his work. He also happens to be an immortal genius that anyone who has ever picked up a pencil should look at very closely. This was my attempt to copy one of his drawings, creatively entitled "Young Woman Holding a Tray." I should note that the right hand that seems to be fading off the side of the page was not, as usually happens, an artifact of me placing the drawing improperly on the page but was actually there in the original. It makes me feel a lot better to know that Rubens had some of the same problems with composition that I do.

Me vs. Tiepolo

I will admit that I knew very little about Tiepolo before my recent trip to Italy. I saw this painting - "Neptune Offering Gifts to Venice" - in the doge's palace in Venice and was absolutely floored. I then went on to see a whole lot of Tiepolo's work at various museums around Italy, including an amazing exhibit of his drawings in Rome. That man definitely earned his place among the masters.

This drawing is a detail just showing Neptune offering up his gifts (maybe I'll draw Venice another time). I did this in the Moleskine sketchbook with compressed charcoal.

In-Flight Entertainment

The only downside of my recent trip to Italy was the length of the flight from Seattle. I don't remember exactly how long it was - 9 hours? 10 hours? A billion years? At a certain point, time just stopped and I was trapped in an endless void of mediocre movies and small children kicking the back of my seat. In an effort to keep myself entertained, I started flipping through the in-flight magazine for interesting photos to use as drawing material. I really hit a winner on this one. The subject's name is Avi Bitter and, according to "High Life" magazine, he is a former Turkish pop star who now runs a kebab restaurant in Tel Aviv. If I'm ever in Tel Aviv, I will definitely pay him a visit.

Two From Venice

I recently spent two amazing weeks in Italy with my wife, during which I had grand plans of strolling around with my sketchbook to capture the amazing architecture and the vibrant street life all around us. The problem is, there are only so many hours in the day, and we had immortal masterworks to look at, pizza to eat, wine to drink while lounging in the piazza, and, well... we were on vacation for crying out loud. So the sketchbook mostly stayed in my suitcase as I stared with slack-jawed amazement at the work of the great masters.

I did manage a couple of quick ones in Venice. The drawing on top is an ink sketch of a statue in front of Santa Maria Del Rosario. The pencil sketch on the bottom is a very abbreviated attempt at the domes of Santa Maria del Salute from the balcony of our hotel. I would have worked in more detail, but I felt that it was more important to run out to the bar for wine and fried seafood. So much for suffering for my art.

Me Vs. the Sotheby's Catalog

Being married to an art historian has numerous advantages, one of which is the constant presence of numerous books of old master drawings just lying around the house. In this case I happened upon a Sotheby's catalog full of some really amazing images, so I felt inclined to pick up my pens and try my hand at them. Close examination of the originals would reveal numerous errors in both of these, but such is the way with an ink drawing.

The one on top is "A Man Seated Smoking at Table" by Jan Josef Hormans the Elder (note that I hope to someday live long enough to be referred to as "the elder," although I'm more likely to be referred to as "that odd man who lives across the street and shouts at the pigeons. Don't make eye contact."). The one below it is taken from "The Prophet Isaiah Reading From a Scroll" by Giovanni Francesco Barbieri.

Not Extinct

Yes, I am still here. I had every intention of continuing to draw and post over the past few months but, well, sometimes life interrupts. For my triumphant return, I have taken pencil and sketchbook to a photo from the New York Times of a carrier pigeon. Sadly, the pigeon in this photo is of the taxidermied variety, because we humans decided that the planet would be better off without this particular species. We seem to do a lot of that.

How They Roll in Zagreb

This is an ink drawing done in the always-beloved oatmeal sketchbook from a photo a friend of mine took during his travels in Croatia. I like images of crusty old guys. I have high hopes that I might live long enough to one day join their ranks.

Another Portrait Party Entry

And the portrait party just keeps going. The original thread with the photo I drew this from is available here. Thanks, as always, to the mighty Julia Kay for putting together one of my favorite things on the internet.

The Leaf Frog is Watching You

Behold, the mighty leaf frog. This was done in charcoal pencil from a photo on the National Geographic web site. I should note, with apologies to any batrachiologists who might be reading this, that "leaf frog" seems like kind of a lazy thing to name such a peculiar creature. How about "High Priest of All Things Frog-Like"? "Bug-Eyed Harbinger of Doom"? Come on people, we can do better than this.