Return to the Portrait Party

Ah, Julia Kay's Portait Party. Still one of the best things on the internet. This is a dump of a few of my drawings over the past couple of months that have been collecting dust as I have been too lazy to pull the scanner down off the shelf. In my defense, it is kind of a high shelf and there's been a lot of football on TV.

Helen Mirren is Unspeakably Cool

This photo of Helen Mirren riding the New York subway with perfect grace and style made the rounds of the internet a while back and I just couldn't resist giving it a try. My hope is to one day be 1/116th as cool as she is.

Return of the Lunchtime Sketch

When I lived in New Orleans, I would often head out on my lunch break to do a bit of drawing. This was sometimes a bit limiting since I spent most of my time working out in the suburbs, where the amazing architecture that has made New Orleans famous is replaced by strip malls and grim industrial buildings. Still it made for a nice break. I've done a lot less of that since I've lived in Seattle, but I have high hopes that I might get back into it. Here's my first attempt in a while, a house a few blocks from from my workplace in the First Hill neighborhood. This was done in ink over two short sessions that left me just enough time to get back to my desk and eat my sandwich.

Oily Experiments

One of the most exciting things about my new place in Seattle was an extra bedroom with good ventilation that my wife and I planned to use as a combined office/studio. We are now approaching the one-year anniversary of our move into the aforementioned "new" place and I have only just gotten around to setting up the easel and dusting off the box of oil paint that has been sitting in my closet for longer than I care to admit. The glacial pace of my studio set-up should come as a surprise to exactly 0% of all of the people who have ever met me.

For my first attempt, I decided to head over to Julia Kay's Portrait Party for source material (the original post is here). This is my first ever attempt at a portrait in oil. I'll be the first to admit that I totally missed the tilt of the head, but I like to think I managed to capture a bit of the life of the original photo. It was also lots of fun to play around with, so there may be more of these.

Welcome Back, Adam

This drawing was done in compressed charcoal and is based on a photo in the New York Times from an article published a couple of months ago about a statue of Adam by Tullio Lombardo. The statue was smashed to pieces in an accident at the Metropolitan Museum of Art that is still something of a mystery (one of the conservators says that he suspects "foul play"). The museum spent about a decade putting it back together and restoring it to something very close to its original state. The article itself (read it here) is a really fascinating account of a restoration effort that would not have been possible without some impressive technological advances and an incredibly dedicated group of people. I look forward to seeing it in person the next time I make it to New York.

First Baptist Church, Seattle

Every now and then, the sun does actually come out in Seattle. This is especially rare in the month of February, so when it happens all of us Seattle-ites rush outside in a desperate attempt to acquire a little Vitamin D. It also provides an opportunity to draw on location, so I took my skecthbook a few blocks down the hill and tried my hand at the First Baptist Church. I do wish I had set up the composition in such a way that the entire steeple had fit on the page, but other than that I'm pretty happy with how things came out. I look forward to doing more of this when summer rolls around.

When Is It Done?

This was an interesting exercise in learning when to step away. I have ruined many a drawing by getting overly fussy and deciding that some extra detail needed to be included or some element that I had labored over really needed to be erased and re-done.

This is a pencil drawing based on a photograph by Henri Cartier-Bresson, from the catalog of a retrospective of his work that I was very fortunate to be able to see in San Francisco a few years ago. There's a lot more going on in the original photo than I included here and the angle of the figure's head is totally wrong but, after stepping back from it, I decided that it had gone far enough and that I needed to put down my pencil before things started to go downhill. I'm still not sure if this was the right decision, but at this point I think I'm ready to declare it "as good as it's going to get" and move on to the next one.

Me Vs. Hans Baldung Grien

This is a copy of "The Head of Saturn" by Hans Baldung Grien, done with charcoal pencil in my oatmeal sketchbook. I was really struck by how tightly controlled the original drawing was, with every line placed perfectly while still maintaining a sense of life and motion. I think I managed to capture a bit of that, although I feel like I missed something with the expression around the eyes and mouth. The face in the original drawing really conveys God-like power scowling at the folly of lesser beings, whereas mine kind of looks like a guy who is annoyed because he can't find his car keys.

A Chimp Named Frodo

Once again, I'm digging into the photo selections on the National Geographic web site for source material. This worried-looking fellow is a chimpanzee who, according to the caption, is named Frodo. I suppose I would be concerned too if I had to carry the ring all the way to Mordor. This was done in my oatmeal sketchbook using a charcoal pencil.