Back!

Well, it has been over a month since the last post, and the only good reason I can provide is that it was lights out in the Children's ward at 9:30 p.m.  My usual late night drawing activities were severely curtailed.  Rather than going into details why I was in the hospital with my daughter, I'll let these sketches do the talking...

 Traction Bed

 Traction Brace

I am working my way through a fantastically fun book called, Drawing for the Artistically Undiscovered.  It is by Quentin Blake (yes, illustrator for Roald Dahl's books) and John Cassidy.  You are supplied with an ink pen, and two water-soluble pencils in red and black.  No eraser!

This excerpt from page 7 pretty much sums up the spirit of the book:

... sneak into the heart of your subject by going direct.  We're not so much interested in the appearance of something, so much as the "something" itself.

Think of it this way:  An effective poem wastes no words on its way to the core of its subject.  A successful drawing wastes no lines on the same trip.  One can spend weeks on a marvelous painting of a rabbit, accurate to the tiniest detail - and yet still miss its essential rabbit-ness.  And then dash off a funny little sketch in a few lines - and pin that bunny's soul to the paper.

The sketches above were quickly dashed off, and there are some sketchy (as in bad) bits, but no erasing!  For the hands, I couldn't decide whether to go with cartoon tradition of four digits, or with real-as-I-count-'em of five digits.