Random Sketchbook Pages

I've noticed that if you start paying attention, you can find the decaying little bodies of birds everywhere. I always hate to see it, but still I am compelled to draw what comes before my eyes. This guy had not been dead long.

You can never go wrong drawing the inside guts of a bell pepper.

"Invented" (made-up) faces and figures. Pencil.

More faces drawn freely without any idea of what I want them to look like when I start. I just figure it out as I go. Ink.

Faces in profile in fountain pen.

New Painting/New Project

This is a new painting from a project I am doing in collaboration with a writer friend of mine.  We are still in the early stages of this project.  Title of this piece is 'The Dead".

(Detail)

(Detail)

To give you a sense of scale.

Finished Painting.  Acrylic, India Ink, sand, and grass on unprimed canvas. 4' x 5'

Animals Improvised in Ink

This image was created by taking a brush loaded with watered-down India Ink and then just started making random marks until I began to see a fish shape.  I then consciously worked the image in that direction.

Not sure what this thing is even supposed to be... some kind of sheep like animal... created in the same manner as the fish.

Invading army on horseback. Sometimes its fun just seeing what your subconscious mind and hand come up without help from your own "ideas".

This one was a demo for a class assignment. Not exactly 100% finished but I lost interest. Ballpoint pen.

Drawings from Life

Some guy from a Life Drawing group that meets at UTC.  Fountain Pen. 14" x 17"

Mandy in Charcoal.  18" x 24"

Nathan. Charcoal.  18" x 24".

More to come...I intend to do much more life drawing this summer.

Recent Animal and Tree Drawings

This one is done with one of those awful Micron pens but it was what I had handy at the time.  This is drawn from a 19th century wood engraved illustration, but I made it a little more my own through distortion of his facial expression and pose.  I've only seen owls out in the wild maybe three or four times. 

Beetle in Ball Point.  As I often do, I just started scribbling with a ball point until an image starts to emerge.  This time, I grabbed a reference book on bugs and used that to give this a more naturalistic edge.  Probably about an hour on this one.

Once again, I started scribbling with my pen until I started seeing negative shapes that looked like the spaces in between bare branches.  

Stylized bull in fountain pen.  This was just me playing with shape, pattern and value.

Line: Dancer & Paul

Ballpoint.  This is my 6th or 7th attempt at this subject (loosely) using a photo that came out of the newspaper.  

Crow-Quill Pen and India Ink.  Drawn from life. Ink spill on the right side.

Random Pages from Sketchbook Dated Aug-Sept 12, 2007

Can't remember if I made this face up or if it was drawn from life. Pencil.

Random markings into a face in profile. Ballpoint.
Drawing/Plans for a Quilt that got about 75 percent finished.
Mandy from the back. Ballpoint.
My sketchbook pages often look like this... images placed at random with no intended connection between them.  Ballpoint.
I have a large box full of filled sketchbooks and from time to time I will post a few pages.  Tomorrow I will be spending a good part of the day with friends in Cohutta, GA.  I plan on doing some drawing and will post my results hopefully on Thursday.

R. Crumb

Yep... he's one weird and twisted individual, but he is also one of the most original visual artists around today.  This is a semi-caricatured portrait of the artist Robert Crumb in pen an ink.  

Jere in Profile

This is sort of a caricatured drawing of one of the six dogs that we have adopted.  It is done with crow-quill pen/brush and india ink.  Besides wanting to capture his character and likeness, I was interested in playing around with shapes.