View from Lamont Park III

Drew at Lamont Park again. This is a detail of the view of buildings, simplified. Colored Pencil 5"x7."
There is not sculpture sketch today.

Lamont Park

Here is another view of Lamont Park - in the snow. 5"x7" Colored Pencil.


And, today's sculpture sketch. It takes, as its starting point, the overlap of sets of parallel lines.

Holly II

5"x7" Colored Pencil Re-do of yesterday's drawing. I want to learn to draw a beautiful leaf.
Also, here is another holly sculpture sketch.

Holly Leaves

Continuing on the monochromatic botanical theme...
5"x7" Colored Pencil




And, the sculpture sketch based on the drawing.

Redone Mums

These are the second version of yesterday's mum's. Mums reworked. 5"x7" Colored Pencil. On this version, the lightest yellow is applied thinly, whereas the yellow over the shadowed areas is the same hue but applied thickly, to the point of burnishing.

How I would love to have
Galaxies of flowers,
Bushels of roses,
Mountains of anemones.





The sculpture sketch for today is also a reworking of yesterday's. This one is simplified and abstracted.

Flowers

This is the impression my bunch of yellow mums make.
5"x7" Colored Pencil




Here is my oil clay response to the drawing.

Snowstorm

Yesterday, it was hard to find a place to draw. We're having a snowstorm, you know. So, I drew this line drawing over dinner at Subway.




Today, I drew the view out my window.




And, did my sculpture sketch "snowdrift."

Visual Arches

Today, I drew in the Mount Pleasant Neighborhood of DC. This scene attracted me because of the of the way the moped makes a sort of diagonal arch across the composition of single point perspective converging lines and vertical buildings.
It's the standard 5"x7" colored pencil piece.


And, here is today's sculpture sketch response to the drawing.

Lemurs

Today, I went to the DC Zoo, as it was cold, drew inside. The Lemurs were rather obliging. They struck a variety of poses, although they would not hold still for long. So, the poses are done mostly from memory. But, the painting is mostly about composition and pattern - the rocks and shadows and pattern of the tree branches, so that's OK.


And, today's sculpture sketch - Lemur.

Old Wall

This is a 5"x7" colored pencil drawing of a wall in the garden of the Old Stone House in Georgetown in Washington, DC. Part of it was completed outside while losing feeling in my frozen fingers. Part was completed from memory after I went inside a frozen yogurt shop to warm up.



And, today's quick sculpture is the figure I imagine to be sitting on the wall I the picture.

Rock Creek Park and Trees

Today, I went on a little journey. Remember this drawing?





Well, I went through the pergola and down the hill and into the green woods. Only, the woods weren't green. They were sort of orange. Actually, the woods I went into - Rock Creek Park - are on the other side of a hill lined with green trees. That is one of the lovely things about Washington, DC. There are green trees all year long as well as deciduous trees who lose their leaves.
This 5"x7" colored pencil painting was drawn in this woods along with the smell of wet leaves and birds calling from time to time.






And here is today's quick sculpture inspired by the drawing.

Last Night

There was no drawing yesterday. Instead, I spent a couple of hours in the basement making this:









I call it The Captain. He is standing, I think, on the deck of his ship, looking out towards the horizon.

Today I froze less...

It was a really nice afternoon in Washington, DC. From 3PM to 5PM, I stood in a little triangular park in the Mount Pleasant neighborhood and drew this 5"x7" colored pencil piece:


Then, I went home and keeping the theme of columns going, made this:






I call it "Four Lobed Elephant."
Also, I'm working on getting my colored pencil pieces on a website through which people can order prints, so soon I should be able to post a link to that site on this blog... Stay tuned.

Today I Froze to Death in DC

Columbia Heights, Washington DC, 5"x7" Colored Pencil



And the rugby car inspired by this drawing. The original inspiration evolved that way. I started out trying to make a composition of right angles and at a certain point it looked like a cat to me and that was more interesting.

1 World Trade Center

Here is today's 5"x7" colored pencil landscape. It is of 1 World Trade Center as seen from Washington Square in New York City. It was executed partly on site and party on my subsequent train ride. Rather bumpy. Hard to draw, but it got done.
The quick sculpture for today is inspired by the way the tree branches make a kind of frame for the tower in this drawing.

New York Harbor

Here is today's 5"x7" plein aire colored pencil landscape. The subject is New York Harbor as seen from Battery Park - the tip of Manhattan. The light was brilliant - late afternoon sun, but it was cold and windy and I drew quickly.



Then, I went to a coffee shop and make this, playing off the negative spaces made by grasses which you can see in the foreground of the landscape.

Reworking the Consevatory

5"x7" Colored Pencil, Como Park Conservatory
I drew from an original sketch from a few days ago and photographs I took at the time of the sketch. The reworked sketch has more detail and is more precise and crisp than the original.


Taking the image of polygons fitting together in the drawing and then making forms that overlap when seen from above, I made this quick sculpture. Yesterday's quick sculpture involved overlapping forms. In this sculpture, the overlapping forms appear to relate differently, depending upon the viewing angle.

Pittsburgh and Overlap

Today's landscape is a 5"x7" colored pencil of a detail of the view from downtown Pittsburgh's Point State Park where the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers come together to make the Ohio River. This landscape is looking down the Ohio.



And, this is today's "sculpture sketch." I experimented with different overlapping shapes. If you look at the landscape, you will see that overlap is one of the primary means of representing the distances of objects from the viewer.

Garden Trees at the Chicago Institute of Art

7"x9" Colored Pencil, Quick Sketch of Garden Trees at the Chicago Institute of Art



So, a funny thing happened yesterday. I missed my train and ended up having some extra time in downtown Chicago. But, that's not how the story began.
It began with a morning walk. I got up early in order to have plenty of time to catch a train and ended up at the station way too early, so I went for a walk. There was no one - or at least very few people - out. I walked down by the lake and looked out on the orange dawn and took in the stillness of the morning and the distant horizon. Everything was dormant and peaceful - the city, the lake, the trees. And, the trees really struck me. Winter trees make such crisp silhouettes against the grey sky. They go from one thick trunk to thousands of threadlike tips, all in the space of a few dozen feet and by such a simple, natural process. So dramatic and so quiet all at once. I enjoyed the trees.
I walked from the shore to Michigan Avenue and along the front of the art institute. There was a locked garden on one side. It was filled with more leafless trees. They looked carefully pruned and the trunks were bumpy. Very unique. I wanted to draw them, but I had a train to catch.
Later, as I was standing on the train platform, waiting for my 9AM train, there were more trees: I could see the tops of the trees from the park above the walls of the station. A flat, grey wall, tree branches, and sky. All intricate and at the same time two dimensional and stark.
And then, a station employee came out to the platform and told me to move from platform 1 to platform 2. She said there was a problem with track 1, so all trains would be going to track 2. I and several other people moved from track 1 to track 2. Then, a few minutes later, our train rolled in to track number 1 and rolled away as we all watched helplessly from track 2 and missed it. There were some angry people, needless to say. And, as a result, I ended up with a few hours to kill while I waited for the next train. So, I went back to the Art Institute and did a very rapid drawing of the leafless trees in the garden (the drawing pictured above), and then I dashed about the Art Institute, camera in hand, and tried to take in the whole place at once. A fun way to do a museum, actually.
So, here are the trees, born of wonder and inconvenience. I'm actually glad, at this point, that I missed the train.

Reworking the Conservatory

In progress:


And today's very small sculpture called Peapod Worm

Crystal Court

5"x7" Colored Pencil, Crystal Court (IDS Tower), Minneapolis, MN



And, today's sculpture "sketch." The starting point was the negative space created by the slat in the benches on today's drawing.

Frogtown in Winter

5"x7" Colored Pencil Drawing
My well-loved neighborhood in the snow.



Also, today I am starting a new initiative. For quite some time, I have been posting a (pretty much) daily drawing. To that, I am going to attempt to add a daily sculpture - something fairly rapid in oil clay. This will be, I think, a good way to keep the ideas flowing and to develop new projects. I think the sculptures will be based on some aspect of the drawing done that day.
Here is today's quick sculpture. Notice that it incorporates the way the trees were drawn in the drawing.
I would also love to know how people react to the little sculptures. So, please do leave comments!

Conservatory in the Snow

5"x7" Colored Pencil, Drawn on Site of the Como Park Conservatory, St. Paul, MN

Lights Like Snow

Drawn from a photograph I took today at the Mall of America, 4.5"x6.5" Colored Pencil







The color pallet (prismacolor pencils) the latex paint was just white for the dots.