The fact that I haven't been posting often is not evidence that I haven't been sketching. I've been sketching - badly. (And working on a project, which isn't bad.) My last four sketches, two of which are posted here for your amusement, were things I would have preferred to keep under wraps, but I'm just not hitting the groove with the quick sketches. Which means I've had nothing better to post.
This entry is called "intermediate" because I was thinking about how when one is just starting to draw - or starting again after an absence - improvement comes quickly and satisfaction comes rather easily. But after a while, you start developing habits, some good, some bad, and producing the same kind of sketches that don't really advance anything.
The lady here was waiting for her husband, I think, when I was at Starbucks the other day. There was actually a window between us, but I know she knew I was sketching her. I think maybe she was amused by it.
The street scene represents about 20 found minutes when an appointment was pushed back. The little tentlike thing on the left should have been edited out; it was a protection device used by utility workers.
Today I did a little pen and watercolor sketch based on a scene from a play I saw last night. Two of my family members got very quizzical looks on their faces when I showed it to them. They didn't know what to make of it. It is a little weird. So now I don't know whether to post or not.
10 comments:
Post it! Post it! Your sketches are very good.
We enjoy them.
Please kkep posting! Even the simplest sketches are fab!
I really like your sketches. I think we all tend to undervalue our work - keep posting, please!
Hey, how are you? I love your drawings, but I have a request. I know you're not supposed to request things from the artist, but I would love to see some of your avian friends from the raptor center. Have I missed some that you did in the past- I've seen some other birds, like the turkey and buzzards. Your sketches of Momo are great too. They capture her essence. (forgive me if I've violated a blogging rule)
That intermediate thing--that plagued me for a long time as a writer. When I first started taking writing classes, I improved really rapidly. Leaps and bounds. And then I got to the point where I was moderately technically proficient but the stories were just...okay. I didn't make mistakes much, at least at the sentence level. But I knew that the stories were not really doing something that would get me published. (That was the only yardstick I really had.) So I wrote that way for several years and then I had a breakthrough. I can remember the story. And then I got better and then I wrote like that for awhile.
It feels as a writer that my career is mostly a long flat line punctuated by little breakthroughs. Is that what the sketching and watercolors feel like?
(I like the city scene, but what I really like is the unfinished building at the left. That really interests me, the way it isn't filled in. It's an interesting space since the whole concept of a house is an enclosure in space and yet there that is, empty.)
(Yours is the second piece of art about houses that has really captured me. I saw a painting in a gallery in Austin by a painter named Jennifer Harrison that I really liked. Photos don't do the paintings justice which are of an interesting size and richly textured, but you can see them at http://www.yarddog.com/collection.php
)
oops
Of COURSE you should (must!) post it.
And is the street scene Fairmount and Cedar?
Diane: Thanks, and I'm not worried about breaking blogging rules. Half the point of blogs is that there are so few rules, I think. I will do more raptor pictures indeed, and I appreciate the suggestion. You probably haven't missed any - I haven't done many. It's still quite a challenge, all those feathers.
Maureen: Yes, I think there is a comparison to your writing plateaus and peaks, though in my own fiction writing I haven't had as many peaks, so it's hard to say.
Jacqueline, dear, you are SO right, it's Fairmount-Cedar, and you'll be pleased, I'm sure, that I left out the sign on that corner building. :-)
post it! I like the way the lady is looking at you. From the way you've drawn her expression, I think she knew, too!
Post it - because it's interesting to see the highs and possible lows of someone's work.
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