Antique Auto Museum in Asheville

This is a 1940 Packard I sketched sitting cross-legged on beautiful wide heartpine floorboards. The small museum is part of the Grove Park Inn in Asheville, NC. I had about 20 minutes, and an 8 x 10 inch sketch pad and a pencil. I love these old autos from the 40's, with their big fenders and tall grills.

This one is black, with shiny chrome on the bumper, grill, vents, and headlight trim, and whitewall tires. A very classy beast. Click the image for a closer look.

Sketching at the Museum of Life and Science - Durham

I did a quick visit to the Museum of Life and Science in Durham, NC recently, and did several sketches. These will also appeared on our Durham blog "Top of the Triangle." Most of the Tangelo family contributes, including Moomin Light.

This lion skull captured my interest immediately with all the curves and positive/negative spaces overlapped. This exhibit has a crank on it that makes the lion skull (and several others, including a human skull) go through the motions of chewing. The twisting, side-to-side grinding motion is captured well on the horse, for instance. The lion just opens and closes the alrmingly large mouth with the disturbingly large teeth.

These pen sketches are at opposite ends of the timeframe spectrum, with the lion skull holding still so I could take my time (about 20 minutes) while the red ruffed lemurs (below) were twitchy (like most lemurs when they're not asleep) and I was lucky if I got 20 seconds for each pose.

These lemurs are my favorite kind, with their long sensitive looking faces, the red fur, and the long dark tails like feather boas.

Near the museum, along an exercise trail, is a "brontosaurus," the last remaining evidence of the museum's old dinosaur trail. You can date the dinosaur exhibit from the fact that the brontosaurus was later found to be a mistake - a combination of bones from several dinosaurs. I grew up with brontosaurus in my dinosaur books, but my kids grew up knowing about the error. This particular, huge, sculpture was badly damaged by vandals years ago and was going to be removed, but the community rose up and ran find raisers (we have some t-shirts as evidence of our support) to restore and keep the "bronto." It features in the banner I created for our Top of the Triangle blog (link above), and is part of our image of Durham, so we were elated that it was preserved. And they didn't overdo the restoration - it still looks old and weathered. Doing this watercolor sketch made me lose track of the time, and led to my being late for the life drawing session that week.

Sketching in Asheville

We picked up Daughter at the end of her first year at UNC Asheville this week. I can't believe her first year is already behind us. She really made the most of it, worked hard, played hard, started a dance club, and made impressions that have greatly expanded her view of who she is. I think she got more than her time and money's worth - and she made us very proud.

While she finished her semester, however, Youngest, Dearest and I did some touring in Asheville, including the Biltmore House grounds and gardens, and the NC Arboretum. These two sketches were done on location, but the hour in front of the subject was only enough to catch the lines with pencil and memorize the colors and light. Inking and watercolors were applied later, in the hotel room. This Biltmore gardens sketch is the most elaborate and detailed I've done to-date - and I spent about 3 and a half hours on it. It was good to go this far, and to see what I could do with the fountain pen and the little watercolor field kit which is all I carry on these trips. I'm pleased with the result. The conservatory building creates a particularly beautiful backdrop for this garden, and this sketch catches much of my feeling for the spot. The orange bricks against the cool greenish brown stucco is gorgeous.

The second sketch is of a complex redbud tree that is a central player in the perennial gardens beside/behind the main visitor center. I've loved this tree since the first time I saw it, with its crazy weave of branches and the red heart shaped leaves. It was still early in the year, in Asheville, and the leaves were still small and registered as individual red shapes, rather than a mass of overlapping darker shadows. I believe I did a better job, in this sketch, with the depth of the tree branches, using detail, line, and cooler colors to better effect than I've been able to previously.

Sketches are approximately 10 x 12. Lamy fountain pen with Noodler's brown ink, and Cotman watercolors.

Figure Drawing April 28

I got to Life Drawing late - and missed the first pose. Worse, setting up in a hurry, and jumping into drawing without any mental transition from my rush through traffic, unbalanced me. So the first sketches were largely a loss.

But I discovered something interesting. Our model was a beautiful young woman, with a nearly perfect figure and ideal proportions. There were so many lovely details: the slight curve of her forearms, the shape of her hands, her chin, the mulitiple curves of her hip bones, her elbows, her calves... I would have liked twenty minutes, for instance, on the 5 minute pose on the left side of the first photo (above). We have not drawn anyone this young or ideal that I can recall, and it was surprisingly difficult for me. It was like trying to capture a blank slate - a body upon which life hasn't drawn much yet. It made me realize that I focus on some unusual aspect of each figure - such as the long torso and prominent joints of our last model. So I struggled here. First of all because there were so many distracting details, and mostly because there was so little surface feature on her smooth, young body. It's harder to place breasts in a drawing, for instance, when they have no distinct shadows or edges - there is no obvious line of reference for connecting them with the rest of the drawing. And there are fewer hints of the bones in a younger body - and the bones are the cues that provide structure for figure drawing, the frame on which all the muscles and weight are balanced.

The second photo here is of the two twenty minute poses. These are not particularly large (the page is less than 18 by 24) and yet I didn't get as far as I would have liked. At least I finally was understanding what I was drawing, and was making some progress. Then, as usual, time's up. I always feel worn out and stiff; that I couldn't do another pose - and I always feel that I finally was getting somewhere and wishing there were one more pose...

Where I've Been - Travel and Sketching

I've been on the road a lot (again) - for work and for pleasure. Georgia, of course - but this time I discovered Roswell (thanks to Dearest for research locating something historic and interesting outside Alpharetta). Here is a sketch of Barrington Hall, a historic site. I sketched this during a thunder storm - capturing the house quickly with pencil, getting into watercolors just in time for the rain, and having to make a dash for the house's lovely porch (sketch face down, to protect it from raindrops), where I finished the sketch to the sound of the receding storm and a group of young actors rehearsing at a makeshift outdoor stage to one side of the house. I was charmed by the hall's large whiteness against the sky, the offset of the house to the right within the cage of the columns, and the bright aqua green shutters.

And this was done the following night, when I came back and checked out the historic business district in Roswell, sketching this cafe from the fashion store (Capricious) across the street. I then ate at the cafe (NINE - Street Kitchen) sitting at the table under the smaller of the tan colored umbrellas, until dark. Chicken Roma - delicious.

There will be more Roswell sketches. I've only scratched the surface with these two drawings.

And the best thing about this is that I have finally broken through to do some more significant painting and drawing while I travel for business. That means the trips will feel less like time away from my art - and I can stay in practice.

Life Drawing - April 21 2011

We had two models show up tonight - they both had confirmations. But only one had a check cut for posing, and she's the one who stayed. I was happy with the result, because though both are good, I wanted a draw a female tonight (we drew a male last week) and her poses are particulrly good. She's also an artist, and works hard to give us more interesting angles and foreshortening, etc. She's in her sixties or early seventies, I think, and she is beautiful. She has a long graceful torso, which I emphasized more in the second and third pages shown here. I don't see the wrinkles after the first five minutes or so - her kind of beauty is NOT skin deep; it's under the skin.

This evening I tried a different way of drawing - with a pencil, as I do when I lay out a painting. And no shading except with lines and hatch. I also decided to lay the drawings on top of or next to each other, and work a little smaller and faster. The results pleased me, and I found I was doing a better job capturing what it is about the poses and the model - the particular grace or beauty of a particular moment as I saw it before me. I think the pastels are too blunt to catch the subtlety I see in the countours.

When I got them home I got out the fountain pen and worked them over correcting things and emphasizing things. A little white charcoal on the first one sets some of the figures apart from others, and makes some of the darks recede because it makes them a cool gray instead of the warm dark of the brown fountain pen ink. These are all 18 x 24 inches - in a Strathmore drawing pad.

I like these. I have a long way to go with this, but this feels like a path I want to pursue further in later sessions. I feel like these break out of the rut I keep trying to get out of - the 19 year old in art school who couldn't figure out how to use the conte crayons.

The first of these is five 2 minute poses. Later at home I spent no more than two or three minutes on each of these, as well. The next two drawings are composed of ten minute poses. The drawing of her back in the third drawing, lower right, was held about 15 minutes, because she was doing fine and we kept asking for a minute more... From all angles I think we all felt it was the best pose of the evening.

There were two 25 minute poses in the last part of the session, but the poses didn't really inspire me and I was tired and I wasn't in the groove at all. So you don't get to see those...

Fountain Pen

While the family was walking towards Malaprop's Bookshop in Asheville, I passed Origami Ink. I slowed down several dozen feet past the shop, and finally told the others, at the door of Malaprop's, that I would meet them inside...

I went back and had a long and interesting conversation with a deply engaged, very knowledgable sales person, who's been with the shop for years, about what fountain pen would be a good one for me to use for sketching. I had realized over the last few weeks that so many of the sketchers (http://www.urbansketchers.org/) that I admire most, and whose line quality I love, use a fountain pen. They also often mention Noodler's fountain pen ink. The shop carried a broad sample of Noodler's - and that plus the expert help ended in the purchase of several bottles and my first bottle-filled fountain pen. If his prediction is correct, it might also be my only fountain pen. It's a Lamy, and the shops's clientelle continue to buy ink and supplies for Lamys they bought there twelve years before.

When the sales person asked how I meant to use the fountain pen, I told him for sketching. He asked what kind of sketches. It was a pleasure to pull the moleskine from my pocket and open it to show him... I love having the means with me all the time.

I've since done a few brief sketches with the fountain pen - only one complete sketch so far, but I already like the feel, and it makes my hand more free.