Meredith...

(12-30-2011...You'd think it would be easier drawing sunglasses instead of sketching eyes. Not really. Mebbe it's the curve, getting the lens sizes approximate, with the curve... I think I'd rather draw the eyeballs...)  :-D

Jim

(12-29-2011. So I noticed something that I've been gravitating toward but hadn't voiced until I spotted myself doing it to Jim, a friend from my art groups... When I sketch someone I usually us a thin marker to sketch them out and then come back in and fill in different lines and areas. I used to use the thicker marker and outline over every thin line. Well, NOW I've been catching myself doing less and less of that. Letting each line be separate and convey something different, it feels. I don't have a more verbal explanation than that... and while I've been leaving out almost any and all shading, I've also been adding in small lines that have nothing to do with when I see the person, or the photo. But for some reason they please me and that little artist chick that lives inside my unconscious self. Is this where my concept of sketching someone, of drawing them becomes less a study of the anatomy and physicality, and more about art? I'm very interested in seeing what happens next. It may happen slowly...I really don't wish to force anything. When I do that, it all comes crashing down around my ears. But I'll let the little artist in her zone decide what happens. Whatever happens, I'm sure I'll learn something from it. And that in itself is very exciting!)  :-)

Amy...

(12-28-2011... This is my friend Amy. Amy was deep in thought, I believe, when this photo was taken. Amy has the prettiest, clear, light eyes...they deserved to not be mucked up by a lot of lines....)

Melanie...

(12-27-2011. A chum from the good old days, Melanie was out at a game when they took this photo of her. I loved the fun that was captured. ) :-D

Snoozing...

(12-26-2011. My friend Timothy let me practice on him [the coffee shop is probably open now, but frankly I'm lazy today...] and I picked the photo of him taking a nap with his little dog sleeping on the couch. Alas, my large sketchbook has been all used up, so I decided to use just him. Every time I try to sketch a lot smaller with my markers they tend to get smudgy and not so fun. Especially with this little 5x8...)

It's a Honey Badger!

(12-25-2011. One of my Facebook friends allowed me to sketch out her picture. I love my friends. With the coffeeshop still closed, and the cold outside keeping me in, they still allow me plenty of face practice. :-D .)

Squinting into the stagelights...

(12-24-2011. My friend Jason let me use his face [since the coffee shop was closed, I had no live victims...well, besides myself and the cat...]...and I stole one from when he was onstage under some very bright lights. I'm not sure that he liked the photo a whole lot to begin with, but I did. I love character photos. And in keeping with yesterday's sketch I felt like exploring it some more and exploring the function of lines as the primary subject and the actual subject becoming almost secondary... or merging the two so that while you notice the personality traits, you also notice the economy and placement of line. When the two shall meet, hopefully with more practice, then I'll be happy and satisfied. For a moment.) ;-)

likey...

(12-23-2011...I didn't want to go for any tight rendering...wasn't expecting a lot out of this quick sketch...but it surprised me. I actually like the marks that my pen decided to make on the paper.) :-D

What is so very interesting....

(12-22-2011...about when I started drawing people is that I took the stick figure approach. Did you ever watch little kids draw stick figure people? They're the same, the only difference being [maybe] that the mom and dad were taller, and the children shorter. So when I started drawing people, no matter what age they were, I was using the same formula...same thickness, same body measurements...not realizing that hey, they're all different! DUH. People watching is indeed a wonderful thing. Paying attention and such.) ;-)

This morning...

(12-21-2011...I decided that for the sake of having more time I'd try to do some sketching in the morning. So I hauled my tuchus out of bed, got ready for work, and walked down to the coffee shop to have a cup of tea. And I found this gent having a cuppa joe before HE had to go to work. This may work out rather well...)

FAIL

(12-20-2011. While this kid had an unusually large head, with giant fluffy hair and a skinny neck...which sorta reminded me of E.T....I noticed after my sketching was done that his facial features were oddly squished toward the front of his head. Hm.) :-)

Concentration...

(12-19-2011. Two things. 1. This sketch taught me to never toss the drying out marker until they're dead and gone. The lighter grey areas on the hair are the old marker, and the darker a newer. It made for a great contrast. and 2. Little kids have the most astounding powers of concentration. When they're onto something, trying to break that concentration borders on impossible. Love it.) :)

Coffee shop ruminations

(12-18-2011...When I got to the coffee shop this morning, there was one person set up on their laptop, all snuggled down into their overcoat looking basically miserable. Poor guy. I sat and sketched my hot tea... one of the hardest things to freehand is equal ellipses...to me, anyway. Then someone else wandered in to get some breakfast and I had a chance to sketch him as it looked like he snoozed waiting for his breakfast sammich.) :)

Epic Beard....

(12-17-2011. Another of my brothers. Yes, I have several. This one grows the most fantastic beards. Nice and full, he could play Santa if he dyed it white.) :-D

Huh?

(12-16-2011... caught mid chat... sketching in-the-middles is so much more fun than sketching something stagnant.)

It's been a while...

(12-15-2011...so I decided to sketch me again... not too bad... a bit wide in the chops, but hey...) :-)

CHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEESE.

(12-14-2011. My big brother. Being Cheesey. Squint squint. Funny enough hardly any lines around his eyes except for those great laugh lines. )  :-D

Pondering...

(12-13-2011. Not me...her. I'm not sure what but it looked like she was deep in thought.)

More more coffeeshop...

(12-12-2011...I had to get more groceries and, go figure, after spending all that money, I didn't want to make anything. So instead, I wandered off to the coffeeshop to get a cuppa tea and a wrap and get a bit of sketching in. This guy had a wild amount of hair. I went with a less is more thing. Usually I tend to do heavy shadows on one side of the face in there, since there are some huge well lit windows... this time I went with less shadows and even lighter on the hilighted side of the face...)

Today

(12-11-2011...I sketched my nephew, who was showing his respect for his elders as I took a photo of him. Apple doesn't fall far from the tree....hehehehe.)

Over the weekend...

 (12-09-2011. As it was my birthday on the 10th, along with our Christmas party, I was away from the internet for a few days. I still kept my sketching up, sketching my mom as she sat at the kitchen table reading the newspaper. Her mouth is a bit off, but not too bad, since her head was bobbing around.) :-D heheheh!

(12-10-2011. You become pretty distorted when you look at yourself in a Christmas ornament.) :-)

A bit different/better?

(12-08-2011...yeh, I'd say a bit more like my friend from yesterday, so that way it was a bit more improvement. The question warrants asking, though, if there were two sketches side by side, one with looser, flowing lines that didn't look like an intended person as much as the other sketch...which had more controlled lines... which one would be better? I dunno if there's an actual answer in that, just a question posed by a friend several weeks ago that has reared its head once again...)  :)

What started out....

(12-07-2011..as me sketching a friend of mine, with my arms and shoulders fried, and George C. Scott yelling at ghosts on the T.V. morphed from a looser, albeit shaky, line exercise into a mixture of people from A Christmas Carol and fun with sort of squiggly shading. Sorry, Kip, it looks nothing like you. Oops. For right now I'll blame Scrooge.) :)

One more time...

(12-06-2011. I got fascinated for the past few days trying to sketch Steph and Mark in relation to each other. This one, I think, is about the closest I've come in keeping proportions pretty close to what they're supposed to be....although I'm still missing something. So for now I'll call it and later maybe, I'll come back and revisit. I feel like I could do these two better in a full portrait... Probably because they're two colorful personalities... and I'm saying that in a good way...that monochromatic just doesn't seem right...) :)

This is what happens when you....

(12-05-2011...have a lot on your mind. Tonight was an interesting night, as the train system that I use was down and then backed up for a bit. Which pushed everything back over an hour, including the work that I had stuck in my bag to bring home and do [which still isn't all done] which I don't mind at all...since that means I have a job, a good thing...and some that I still have to do. Anyhoo, back to the drawering. Something went awry, and as I had a lot of stuff on my mind, I couldn't just drop it all and let my brain take over. So while it's passable, no...I didn't quite enjoy doing this one like I usually do. The up side, though, is that while it felt stiff and off to do, it still looks better than when I started my experiment. So that's a bonus. Now if I had another three or four hours in the day to loosen up...hehehehe!!)

Webby

(12-04-2011. Luckily Ms. Webb let me use her as practice today, as I really didn't feel like going out into the mushy rain....) :)

My last one... :(

12-03-2011... well, not my last SKETCH...heck no. But when I asked for people to sketch this is the last volunteer I had. It was loads of fun... I may need to do that again... :-D )

Scott...

(12-03-2011. This is Scott. Scott carves very cool tiny things. And not so tiny things. Today I did zero for shading, aside from a bit of rounding out of the beard. His hat (that he fixed up) was a secondary monster to try to catch. Not too bad, not too bad...)

:)

Brian...a bit different today...

(12-01-2011. I was challenged by Brian to sketch him. Of course I have no idea what he actually LOOKS like, as I've never met him face to face and he seems to not be one of those people who love taking photos of themselves. However I found this photo that he'd altered and it was fascinating, so I shaded him in. No technical lines today...well, except a bit in the circles to plot them out a bit...the rest, just...shading. Tons of fun, though. The side of my pen once again came in handy.) :-D

Sssteph...

11-30-2011. I love this one, but I don't love this one. I don't because it doesn't look "exactly" like her, but I do because it's a bit of a caricature of her, exaggerating parts. Probably the best thing is the fun I had, again, with the lines. And yup, I'm going to say it again... that's the whole idea of this, right? It was fun.) :-D

Mark

(11-29-2011. Sometimes you try hard to find something there in the person or photo or whatever to give you a clue of how to draw it. I think I've become a firm believer in the "there's no exact drawing style for everything" school of sketching that may well be or I just made it up... anyway, there are some that you just start. You shut down your brain and let go. I'd pretty much put that akin to that first step as you go skydiving... there's nothing between you and the ground, you're not sure if it's going to work out or not, but you've got zero control over the outcome. And it's a rush. And you sit there and watch it happening and think "wow, that's cool. I like THAT line." and so on. My absolute favorite moments in time. This was one of them. No thinkie, just draw. Heck, don't even focus on the paper.)  :)

Mika

(11-28-2011, Mika's a gent from my art group, and I have to apologize to him ahead of time, since his eyes seem to be a bit more narrow set in the sketch than on him. Hm. I was once again going for less is more in the shading department. And line thickness... which I didn't do tooooo bad on...) :)

Congratulations, Thom, I just saw that you were my 300th post.

(11-27-2011. Well, you weren't actually my 300th sketch, since I'd added a few together at the beginning and when Google thought I was spam and cut me off for almost a week. But it does sound nice and round, huh?  Thom is an old friend from college. Actor Extraordinaire, I looked for the perfect photo of him to sketch, and out of all his great headshots etc, I couldn't resist this one of him goofing with his son. Now this shows fun. I skipped out on just about ALL shading, depending on my drying out pen with it's grainy to make a bit of lighter grey for shading, and turning it a bit to get a nice strong thick line for any defined lines.)

Kristin and a hug...

(11-26-2011. I went back a bit into shading...not too heavily, since that seems to make me wince once I'm done... but enough to make her and her baby boy not look flat. Interestingly, I realized it's been a while since I've done profile, and he was a bit difficult to do, since with children: A. they have really smooth skin and no wrinkles to anchor them and B. full profile and full straight ahead tend to flatten people out.  No dynamic movement. He sure is cute though.)  :-D

Karen and Nancy

(11-25-2011. I cheated. I'll readily admit. To sketch Karen and Nancy I pulled out my 11x14 inch sketch pad. I knew if I tried to do it in my 8x10 I'd never have had enough room for my favorite marker without making them smudges. I also admit I took my pencil and drew two ovals and a few lines to keep their eyes, noses, and mouths on the correct tangent, since drawing things on an angle seems to be a weak spot of mine. I wind up making them off. But you know what they say...practice practice practice. I took a photo of this to upload to my blog, but decided that there was something sorta flat about Nancy... she needed some shading to make her more three dimensional, but I didn't want to do a really heavy shading. So I compromised. I think it's not too bad...) :)

Heidi...

(11-24-2011. My friend Heidi came up with a great idea. She would draw me and I'd draw her. She's spending a busy Thanksgiving, I'm thinking, with family [although I did see mine partially done]. Here's mine. She looked so happy with her baby daughter on her...)  :)

Valeria

(11-23-2011...Yah, Poor Valeria...I tried to make her a bit smaller to get her hair in -she really DOES have great hair- and my thicker pen didn't like smaller too much. I wound up making her eyes a tad too close....*sigh*. on the other hand, I DID have fun with the shading. I may have to revisit...)

David

(11-22-2011...Another WAN friend who so graciously let me use him for practice. I love drawing beards. Did I happen to mention that? I used to not like it at all, but I'll be darned if I'm seriously enjoying it...) :-D

Jay n' Max

(11-21-2011. This is my Unca Jay. And his best bud, Max. A bit of a challenge, since this one was a figure and not just a head. But good practice, since I get so excited drawing faces, and practice on every aspect of a body...including canine... is a good idea.)  :)

random guy at the coffee shop

(11-20-2011. I've been working on a project, so I decided to post this random guy I practiced on at the coffee shop.)

Kacy and Kitty...

(11-19-2011...Kacy let me sketch her. I had to sketch her with her kitteh. A twofer!) :-D

Em...

(11-18-2011. My friend Geri let me borrow her daughter's face. She mentioned school pics, and while I'm not totally opposed, there's just something about candid shots. Those tiny moments in life. I love looking at those, because THOSE are the ones that you can see a person's life in their eyes. You can read a story. This was from Halloween 2010, in her costume, with her mom. I got fun, excitement, love... yup. A great shot. It made my "quick sketch" very fun, and I just wanted to keep building it up a bit more...)

so....

I asked my friends if I could sketch them, and several said yes. Which I love. And is a bit scary. Since when you sketch someone you KNOW, it's supposed to LOOK like them, right? (And you want to be able to balance getting it to look or feel somewhat like them vs. keeping cool lines to keep it interesting and fun. Yeah. Well, sorry, Charles. I sorta bombed out tonight. The line weight isn't too bad, but it feels stilted. I even tried another one. Same thing. Stage fright? Possibly. Bad Drawing Day? Probably. I run through those some days, where you try and you try so hard and no matter how loose you want to try to get it, it just sucks. Usually I can loosen up through a gazillion attempted and aborted sketches, but since it's 11:41...I'm thinking that it's just time to go to bed and I'll loosen up more tomorrow and find my happy place. On an up note, it WAS fun to draw the shower cap...)  ;-)

oh, baby.

(11-16-2011. Better, with less shading. This child is actually much younger than appears in here. The problem when you elongate the skull a bit much and thin out the face. Now she looks more like an older toddler than a baby that's just becoming one....)

Random Writer

(11-15-2011. I ran out of people to stare at. For the moment. So I picked a random writer. Favorite part of this... the shading on the beard.) :-D

:)

(11-14-2011. Another smiler!  I love smiles.  :D )

Giving it another go...

(11-13-2011. Another try at a baby face... as one of my friends, Jean, mentioned: It's very hard to draw a baby and try to use shading. They're just too smooth. A few lines here and there, and that's about all...)

At the Coffee Shop...

(11-12-2011... Even when I sketch from photos, I do think it's definitely helping me with my live drawing...)