154th post. Like wrangling a cat...

(06-30-2011.  Cats just don't understand the whole "hold still" thing.  And when you push them back into position... yeah..they don't really stay that way.  Hm. So you have to draw fast. Or keep moving.) And my pen is running dry...

153rd post. Hands.

(06-29-2011. The best advice I ever got was "If you suck at it do it over and over again." So I sucked at it, and I hated it, and I drew them over and over again, and now I like drawing hands. And this isn't all that bad for a blind drawing...)  :)

152nd post. silly...

(06-28-2011. Laughing? Possibly. Yelling? Maybe. Drunk? Definitely.  For a person that doesn't drink, the time that I DO spend hanging around with people usually circles around a function where there is a lot of drinking going on. Huh.  Go figure.  This gent I drew differently in that I kept my pen down on the paper for most of it, and wound up drawing the head from the fluffy hair on top, down around the ear, down to the smile line, up into the nose, then up to the eyes and down and around to the rest of the beard.  Something very unusual for me to do. But the fact that I did it pretty easily means that playing with lines is really helping me with size and placement. Yay!)

Back on the train...

(06-27-2011. Back on the train watching the peeps play on their electronics.)

P.S.  Correction of previous post. NOT the 159th.  Probably the 150th. But frankly, who cares, right?  It's a LOT.

159th post. Yup. It pretty much say it all.

(06-26-2011. I have silly friends. Who love sign language. I seem to have morphed into this type of sketching for a while. Not that I expect to stay here. If we do not experiment we get stale. That's my way of thinking, anyway.)

thumbs up!

(06-25-2011. Yup.  That pretty much sums it up... )  :)

okaynotsogreat

(06-24-2011. Okay, not an excellent drawing by any means, but the silly face behind it made me chuckle. I laughed, I had fun with a quick sketch, and there I am...loving my lines.)

:)

147th post... focus...focus...

(06-23-2011. Not as scribbly scribble drawing...holding onto the pen by the very end. What does this teach us?  Possibly nothing at all.  Except that my control is a hella better than it was 146 posts ago. and I'm still remembering to have fun and love my lines. I love these lines.)  :)

flower...

(06-22-2011. Not much else to say about this one.  Blind drawing of flowers. ta-da.)  :)

145th post... my little monkeys...

(06-21-2011. I have several thousand monkeys.  Have I mentioned this? [translated: I have a lot of nieces and nephews]  Either blood or "adopted", but this...this is my very first monkey. Kelby Joe, to those of us who know and love him. Along with monkey #3. Which would be Andrew. Cute little bugger. Relatives are always good for practice.  Especially when you like taking photos. LOTS of photos. And it starts thunderstorming outside your apartment, when you'd planned on going outside to sit and sketch. Whoops.)

Intently concentrating...

(06-20-2011. Or just getting bored.  I'm not sure which. A blind drawing.)  :)

143... fuzz

(06-19-2011. Do you know how difficult it is to draw a cat? You wouldn't think so, with the amount of time they spend snoozing. But they seem to have an internal alarm that goes off when you stare at them.)

142nd post... Me.

(06-18-2011. It's been  awhile since I've sketched myself. Not too bad. Cat had to get in there too. Funny thing is he was laying there asleep, and as I was looking at us, I dropped my eyes to find him staring at himself. Intently. I'd really like to know what he was thinking...)  :)

Who KNOWS what number... And then *I* said....

(06-17-2011. My favorite thing about people watching is that when you tell them to "smile" they wind up looking like stiff cardboard cut-outs. Look at anyone's old High School Yearbook. But when they forget that they're being watched, they really start getting livened up...)

139. what a booger!

(06-16-2011. Tiff being goofy. Wait. Tiff was ALWAYS goofy. I like the animated-ness [yes, I am officially making that a word] of her face. Fun to draw.)

138. Aging

(06-15-2011. When people age they don't necessarily get as wrinkled as a shar-pei. Take my great great several times aunt. Over a hundred years old, and very few true wrinkles, more a general thinning of the skin.)

137. Stealthy Man...

(06-14-2011. When you're a big guy like this one, it's really pretty hard to be sly when you peek over someone's shoulder.)  :)

136. Princess Sonny

(06-13-2011.  Okay, we weren't really sure if it was Princess Sonny or Bride Sonny.  According to Sonny it was Princess Sonny, and since she's the one wearing the Royal veil and Boa...well... we agreed.)

135. A drunken vamp..ire...

(06-12-2011. Hey, we can be ANYTHING we want to be.  With the help of a cape, some fishnet stockings, and a bottle of wine.  And I thoroughly applaud. I wanted to be a certain figure ice skater, but I didn't want to keep looking over my shoulder for people wielding police batons...)

134. Stopping for a smoke.

(06-11-2011.  If you gotta you gotta.)

133. George Eating

(06-10-2011. This is my buddy George. I haven't seen George in a while. George likes sammiches. Or at least he did. He probably still does. Who doesn't love a sammich?!)

132. Handing out opinions...

(06-09-2011.  And she didn't care who knew what.  Today was a fun day, working on that cowl neck sweater.)

I seem to be getting a bit easier on trying to fill in every single shadow and line.  For this I give a yay!

140. toon-y

(06-08-2011. Today on the train. Yes, I was on the train drawing. And this one reminds me of an artist...and for the life of me I can't remember where I saw it..or when... ah well.  It was fun.  If it comes to me, I'll be sure to let you know...)  ;-)

. A whole lotta attitude

(06-07-2011. I didn't get to finish her as she wasn't on a long time, but I loved this lady.  Lots of attitude, and a non-generic appearance.  Truth be told, I've gotten away from drawing the train people a bit because lots of times they're so damned similar. So I've been mixing it up to keep it interesting. And fun. After all, that's what it's about, right?)

129. Flowers

(06-06-2011. I wandered down to the coffee shop, but with very few people sitting around, the pickings were scarce, so I meandered back home after a couple half-hearted attempts. I noticed that outside in the courtyard there were some plants that were starting to die out and thought that a bit more interesting, so I plopped down and started drawing... until the ants started coming out of the woodwork..er...groundwork...)

128. More Textures

(06-05-2011. I didn't have to look any further than my own side to find something interesting to sketch...)

127. Color

(06-04-2011. Tonight I wanted to play with colors. After much deliberation, I decided that the western sky was pretty cool [and it didn't hurt that I have a scrubby old chair out back to park it in]and so I rounded up a pad of Canson  colored paper for pastels and my boxes of pastels and went out on my back porch [ translated, that means fire escape with cement walkway] and sat for three hours doing a sketch with the fat side of the pastels. A  dim incandescent lightbulb fifteen feet away and darkness coming, I couldn't go so much by hue as by value.  The first time I got an actual look at the finished product was when I brought it inside and flipped on the lightswitch.)

126. not so successful hands

(06-03-2011. Not too bad of an idea, if I'd been able to carry it out.  But I started out too big. It was going to be a sketch of me drawing my hand holding the sketchbook in which you see a drawing of my hand holding the sketchbook, and well...you get the idea.  Trite?   Yes.  Overdone?  Certainly.  But it would have given me more practice in drawing hands....)

125. Feet

(06-02-2011. What did I learn today?  Well, that you could draw feet and still have fun. Similar to the hands drawing that I did before, it is a bit harder to make it look cool all over, since you can't really bend your feet or make a fist to make more interest all over the page...but I think I did pretty good on this one.)

The odd thing, which I'm sure others who like to draw will attest to, is the fact that different days, different moods, you wind up with different favorite pens to use. This particular one is a thicker pen, and the tip doesn't slide really easily across the paper.  Slow down it stutters.  Speed up, it stops stuttering, but you also lose some control.  But like we said...losing control isn't a bad thing.... ;-)

124. Picasso dude.

(06-01-2011. I got a bit tired of waiting for people to turn back and face me, starting over etc.  And since I liked the way it was going, I just decided to run with it. Obviously the guy didn't look like this, but every time he moved a bit I just kept drawing. Sort of Picasso-esque. But it is all about the fun, eh?  And this was fun...)

:)