24 Hour Sketch

Drawing #4 in the series "Jo-Jo's drawing request for Joe".

It took me a while to logistically piece together the idea of this drawing. Joanna wanted a bear watching a bear on tv watching a bear on tv watching a bear on tv watching a bear on tv watching a bear taking a bath.

Now, though I live in the current day and acknowledge that flat screen TVs are the norm, I do not own a flat screen TV. I own a 1970's RCA TV with manual knobs. So, naturally when I started thinking about how to draw this I thought to myself, "How in the hell am I going to get that many TVs and bears in one drawing with out using a huge piece of paper." Then it struck me.

Being that we have an old TV with the color going out and every so often the picture turns to a green hue or just black and white we rarely use it unless we are watching a movie on VHS. We usually watch television shows or movies via Netflix, via the computer which has a flat panel screen. Huzzah! Flat panel televis…

This drawing went well with Tom Waits playing in the background. Not an important fact but thought I'd share. There are a few different techniques I used here. I kind of like the way I did the clothing. It's a very small part of the drawing but the simple strokes worked out well. I deviated away from what I had been doing for a while which was to start out with soft, light strokes. I did use them sparingly but instead of incrementally getting darker I just jumped into the darker areas. I also did not attempt to follow the drawing very closely; the preliminary lines were done very loosely and without any precision. Because of this I failed to capture the old man glare. Much of the drawing was done with just one pencil.

So I finished it and was right; I completely mutilated my Mom's face. Never thought I'd say that. It was quite comical: some of the expressions that I drew and then manipulated and then screwed up again, etc. I laughed quite a bit when at one point I swear I drew Rick Moranis' (Honey I Shrunk The Kids, Spaceballs) head on my Mom's body. I really couldn't stop laughing. Eventually I got close enough with the eyes that I decided it would be a great idea to distort the mouth. So on and so forth, you get the picture. I came to the conclusion that the only way to redeem this drawing was to actually distort it through photography. I took the picture at such an angle that it created a 90 degree angle of the painting she's holding, which in my drawing was a blank canvas (I wasn't about to ruin her painting by trying to redraw it). After that I photoshopped a photo of the real painting with my drawing and I think it turned out pretty good. The real talent is in her …

Wanted to tap back into the roots of the 24 hour sketch. I did this drawing quick and sloppy, whereas before I would spend an awful amount of time on getting all the muscles perfect with the proportions. I didn't care too much to spend a lot of time on that. I like it. I should throw these in here every now and again.

I decided to start putting these drawings in a sketchbook, when I'm at home. This one should be pretty cool when it is finished. So my 24 hour sketch project worked! It only took 125 ays but my mom started painting again. If only for today, that's still good enough for me.

Yep, I missed yesterday. It wasn't because of Christmas, and it wasn't because my mom painted again. It was a busy day, and near the end of the day I started to feel like crap. Still feel like crap actually. So I completely forgot. Didn't even think about it until this morning. I see this is as good thing. It was bound to happen eventually and I'm glad it happened unintentionally. Not that I plan on taking many days off, but now that the streak is broken I won't feel so bad.

Charcoal again. There are things I like about this drawing just as much as there are things I don't like. I look at this and wonder how the hell I accomplished some of the charcoals I've done in my past. For whatever reason I cannot seem to get the background looking right.

Well I'm a little late getting this one in, but as I've said before: "There will be another drawing later today! Expect it!" I'm not finished with this one but I'm at a stopping point where I need to analyze it and see exactly where I want these tones to go to really make the flower pop. I'm doing this one as Christmas present for an amazing artist/painter I've known my entire life. She is 99 this year and I want this drawing to be as exceptional. Hope I achieve it, that's quite a bar I'm setting for myself. Hope you 24 hour sketch fanatics out there like it as well. I may not need to mention this but I brought the charcoal out again for this one. God, I love how messy my hands get after working with it.

I like how I chose to do this one. Small strokes were used to form this drawing. Yes, I'm saying it: I used lines and loved every minute of it! I only used 4 tones save the white paper background. Even though I used a reference photo for this I feel like it is my own work. I only used the reference as a general go-by. I also dig it cause it looks kind of like a comic character. I've always loved the graphic art of that style but never really ever tried it.

My intention when starting this was to create a two-tone image. Nailed it!

I don't know, I just got done looking at some at some pieces from some phenomenal realists and when I attempted the detail of the lips I just felt discouraged. I know I shouldn't compare myself to anybody else but there's a tricky balance between aspiration and current limitations. As happy as I am with how this turned out I still feel I could have done it better.

Take the noose off and enjoy the holidays!

What I like most about this drawing is the fact that I can see work related notes imprinted in the sheet. Kind of a nice touch I think. This one reminds me if the drawings I was doing about a month ago and I think I may have decided from today's little doodle what I'm going to concentrate on come next month. Keep coming back to find out!

I just couldn't get a good picture of this so I ran it through a lot of filters to try and emulate what the actual drawing looks like. This drawing has taken me over a week to do! Seriously, though I've spent maybe 20-30 minutes on it. I had no time to finish it. Originally I wanted to produce the gradient light with colors but ultimately I brought it home and killed it all with black. I like it alright and if you can't tell what is it, it's a bus. What I like most about the drawing is the light pole. I used my etching technique to maintain that that portion of the drawing was to stay as light as possible. It really works out well.

This is a request from my wife. When I started this drawing I saw shapes and shadow and that is how I am drawing it. I form the objects in the drawing through shading. The key, for me, with this technique is to move rapidly through the drawing changing my pencils just as fast. I put a light tone in and follow it up with a darker one. Precision is only relevant to the general location of objects in the photo and if they fall elsewhere I just work it in somehow.

I like using this style as it gives me freedom from lines which I sort of hate. Not entirely but I try to use them as little as possible. And that being said, all that's missing from this drawing is a row of buildings which I will texturize, for lack of better word, by means of a similar technique. I should be using some projection lines but I'm not. In the end I may or may not scan the drawing for areas that I feel need more emphasis and detail them up (with lines). So lines inevitably may find a place in this drawing …

All done, I wanted to make it appear as if Belle was chewing up Santa in the dark and then had a picture taken with flash but it didn't turn out as well as I intended. Additionally, I just wanted to get done for today, so maybe I rushed it. Her bone structure is a bit off and the eyes look a little bulgy.

Another collage but this time of 30 second sketches. There are some 5 minute sketches in there as well to make myself feel better. I don't like trying to capture a photo in 30 seconds but I thought it might be good practice. For every drawing you see there is another on the back. I chose the best ones and threw them all together.

For you Joanna: Ms. Bethany Hamilton

This is the third and final installment of this drawing. Hope you like it.

I wasn't able to capture this glass vase as well as I have captured glass in the past entries of the 24 hour sketch. It's not symmetrical which really bugs me and it's kind of boring. Whatever, keeping up with the practice is what counts, but I'm feeling the need for structure. Not only have many people been talking to me about this but it seems I'm being pulled towards articles and webpages that stress the importance of focused drawing. The new year may bring an entirely new concept to the 24 hour sketch. I'd really like to do focused practice on a lot of things. I think I might do a month at a time study of specific subject matter. That may vary depending on the subject. My ideas as of today are faces, anatomy, inanimate objects, and landscape. So here opens the poles: what would you viewers like to see first for January? Feel free to suggest your own ideas as well. I think there's something like 2 of you out there so we'll flip a coin in the event of…

I was going to do this tomorrow, December 8th, but felt inspired to start tonight.
The easy part is done, 20 minutes. The second half of Lennon's face will be harder as I'll need to maintain a likeness of the man. Putting that second eye on anybody is always treacherous ground. It really can make or break a drawing. And to be a honest I think the bridge of the glasses are slightly off. We'll see.

There is a website called quickposes.com. It displays an image for a user defined allotment of seconds. I chose 90 seconds. All 24 of these sketches were each done within that time. Some I like, some I don't. I tried various technique and likewise I'm partial to some more than others. Near the end I was ready to call it. And finding an app on my phone that would allow me to use all 24 drawings in a collage was fun too! Maybe I'll take the rest of the year off.

Drawing #3 in the series "Jo-Jo's drawing request for Joe". A baby. Eating a banana. Holding a falcon. In a canoe. At sunset. The open seas will never be the same again!

Much like the elephant in the van drawing I found several references on-line and put them together.

I sort of like the way I tackled he sky (sunset). I used a series of broad strokes one over the other to achieve the layers. Never drew one of those before. I like it much better than drawing the sky when the sun is up. It's easier.

This one took me about 25 minutes. It's an effort of simple contour lines, shading, and smudging. I'm not sure why I like this photo. I think what intrigues me most is that I'm dumbfounded on how it was taken so perfectly with objects (helium balloons) that don't stay put. Even down to the flash of white light down the center which I accomplished by use of a putty eraser. It doesn't quite work out as well as the actual photo but it gets the point across. With all of that timing and placement the composition really comes together.

Today marks a huge milestone for the 24 hour sketch. First, I drew on black paper and it came out good, damn good. Second, I tapped back into a medium that I haven't used for well over 6 years, charcoal. Third, I amazed myself and respired myself. One thing about charcoal (at least in the way I use it, maybe it's unanimous or maybe other artists have a different experience) is that initially the drawing looks horrid, but there comes a point when I use charcoal that it comes together. I can visually see the drawing take form and morph right before me. It's a cool feeling. Partially why I stopped using charcoal is due to the fact that I wasn't producing anything I really liked and that "Holy, mother of god" experience wasn't happening. I'm glad that I felt it again. Fourth, the reference I used had been stewing around for a while in my mind. This is another one of those drawings that I have attempted before and just crumpled it up and drew something sim…

I sat down tonight and in preparation to find a drawing reference I put "rubber soul" on and it struck me. Why not draw the Beatles? So I started making quick preliminary lines and realized that I really didn't want to draw the most recognizable people in pop culture in any sort of photo realistic way. So I continued with my quick preliminary lines making them darker and darker. I used the shadows of the picture to guide me and scrunched them all together. In the end this is what I made. I went back and touched up a few areas with bolder lines to define some areas and then grabbed a few items from the background and tossed them in arbitrarily. This took about 25 minutes.

I have tried to do these pears once before. It was after the Halloween series and I was tapping back into my reservoir of photo references. Along with these pears, I tried two other drawings that day that ended up being crumpled and tossed. Since then I have thought about these pears and my ability to draw them. Every time I went looking for a reference I'd see them and must have developed some minor complex about drawing them again. I knew for sure that I didn't want to attempt it for the second time only to throw it away. But today when I went looking and saw the pears again I decided that they needed to be drawn whether I screwed them up or not. So, here they are: red and delicious!

The purpose of capturing every detail was not my intention today. I wanted to practice working with light.

I tried two techniques on this one. My usual side of the pencil broad strokes and, for the faces, thin strokes. I used the tip of the pencil and by applying various pressure to make close parallel lines achieved the shape or shadow. It's a shame, really, as some of the strokes are so light that they do not appear in this photo. This is not a technique I use very often as I rarely like what is produced. However, I like this.

Another quick one to get in before the day ends.

Worked some more on the lion, not exactly done, but I'm happy to leave it where it is. I wasn't sure how the mane would turn out with the technique I chose. I say chose as if I had more than one notion on how to do this. I didn't buy it turned out pretty good. I started out light and moved the darker tones in gradually and it worked! Hope you all enjoy!

I didn't have a lot of time to work on this today but was able to work in the clouds and water and various tones throughout. It's coming together nicely and may end up being a nice composition when it's done, we'll see. I darkened up the image in post production to give you patrons an idea of what it'll become. Stay tuned!

Drawing #2 in the series "Jo-Jo's drawing request for Joe". This is how it was explained to me: an elephant drinking a DP talking on the telephone while driving with his friends. And the following drawing is what I came up with. I used several references and did a real life photoshop rendering. I like it but its a little messy and hard to decipher what everything is and what's going on. However, due to the fact that it is so messy and what not I noticed, while drawing this, a lot of things I did not intend on drawing or seeing crept in by way of imagination. So have fun looking at it! Is there something you see that you think may have not been intended? By the way, there are three elephants in that minivan.

This guy exemplifies my feelings about waiting until 11:35 to draw today. I almost allowed myself to skip on it. But I toughened up, went on google and found this dude. The picture is amazing an my friends I'm amazed at how well this turned out. I clocked myself at 12 minutes. And demanded of myself to do a decent drawing and not something half assed. I feel I met the challenge and for that am proud. Imagine this guy instead of yelling out a war cry is yelling, "F yeah!"

Just a quick one today. Somehow the time got away from me. This one goes out to someone who got some new shoes this week. And now the new Homegrown Production can commence. For those of you don't know: matching shoes were the missing prop and a decorated Christmas tree. That should resolve all confusion.
The drawing was done in about 10 minutes and man I wish I had used black paper. Might have turned out a little cooler.

I spent another hour on this and am calling it done. I have a tendency to overwork a drawing making it darker and although at times this can turn out good, I really feel that this drawing needed to be light. I've been trying to do that with a lot of my recent drawings. Though I do feel like I could have made this better by spending countless more hours on it perfecting the shade and making it more vibrant; I think it's good practice to say, "enough is enough".

This is a complex one. Did I accomplish the task? In my opinion, no. This drawing would have been better if I used charcoal and white charcoal. It's those little droplets of water that made it tough. They all have brilliant white centers. And that I could not accomplish very well with just a pencil. And I think it's not very clear whether the subject is standing behind a wet, foggy window. Maybe a little bit, but I wonder how many people will see that before they read this. I, personally, cannot objectively see this one. I know that there's a window and I think my eyes are seeing it as such. it will be interesting to wait a few weeks and look at it again when I'm further removed.
The original is quite messy and "busy" with too many hard lines. I softened the image in post production and no I will not be uploading the original. I'm not trying to be withholding, I just don't think the technique is all that remarkable.

Here's a fun one. I wanted this style to be rough. I used basic shaping and broad to thin lines to form almost everything. No projection lines were used so most likely it's out of proportion. I just drew what I thought would look good.

Didn't finish this one either! Man, am I on a role or what? But again this shows a little of my preliminary techniques before I start shading. Hope you half-like it.

This one is taking longer than I'd like. But not that's it taking long, I just can't get into it. Again, I spent 30 minutes on it today. I think I'll let this one sit for a while and get back onto it this weekend.
As you can see I've started to lay out some water. I want to dumb down the detail on a lot of this so I'm using broad strokes. I think it will come together nicely in the end. But I'm not being very particular or neat. Right now it looks pretty messy. And in all honesty I'm completely lost on what to do, where to take it. I'm laying myself out on the line here for all you viewers to see just how I get to a finished product.

All done. Whatever style I was attempting last night didn't come through. No matter, I like how it turned out.

This is just a simple projection. I'll provide a little CAD draft I did to explain what that means:

As time consuming as this may be, at the end I get a true projection. Yes, I measured out each and every plank of wood on this deck just so I could later fill in with black. Sounds counterproductive but the finished product gives a certain amount of textured feel rather than having a flat color. I don't always use a ruler but when I do I draw projections (and really I didn't use a ruler at all it was the edge of a business card). 
So, after all that, which wasn't much. My opinion of this, "Eh." Again I would have preferred my smudgers to my fingers and graphite to a single #2.

Another attempt at drawing a blur. I used varying tones and smoothed everything out with my finger except for the tear and some lashes. I think this could have turned out better if I had my smudge sticks and graphite. But with the resources on hand (pun intended) I think it turned out okay. Additionally, I didn't pay much attention to projection so given that it looks a little odd. However, being that it's already an odd photo, I think it masks the imperfection. Smile!

Happy election day and if you haven't voted yet, please do! Apparently, the two guys running actually have some sort of power.

I wanted to make some statement about today being election day but I really couldn't formulate my own idea. Anybody else feel similar? I looked online for some ideas and found myself on The New Yorker looking at a cartoon of a voting booth where you could see a coin being flipped from inside. I though, "Great idea! I wonder if I could draw the view from within the booth?" And here is what I came up with.

After such an undertaking over the weekend I decided to give myself a break and do something simpler. I also wanted to practice a blur technique. To do this I roughly sketched the background and drew the foreground more detailed and bolder. Let me know what you think.

The picture is quite funny. An old and young person being carted around by two middle aged adults. Also, and maybe I should have opted or a more detailed drawing to convey this, but the three adults are very interested by something to their right while the child is captivated by something to the left.

A suggestion from my wife. She sent this to me in a text and I knew she picked a good one. Naturally she has an impeccable eye for beauty.

As you have seen from yesterday I finished the shading and toning. Some areas were much trickier than others such as the fold around her neck and the garments flow down her right side. I think I did an okay job on that. The ballooned effect on the left and swirled drape down her leg are very pleasing to me. I had to improvise the right foot as the reference photo provided no such foot to look at. Again, I think I did an alright rendition of that. As such with her right hand. What I like most is the suggestion of her body. The photo provided for some indication as the garment is see through but much of it I drew on my own. A lot of the freehand was on account that my angles for everything in this drawing are slightly to very off. With that said, I again, think I tied it up nicely. If a discerning eye was to look at this drawing the owner of that ey…

I annoyed myself with how small I drew this. First off it's a whole different difficulty level but my eyes get all crossed and my neck starts stiffing. I started the drawing with the outlines of the woman and horse and didn't worry about the water at all. Once I was done with that I worked my way down starting with the hair and finished by shading the horse's backside. The horse was a little tricky as most of it was hidden in shadow in the semi-low resolution photo. I worked a lot of it out by memory of the previous horse I drew. One of my least favorite things to draw is water because I never know to get into it. I started by placing the shadows and worked out the rest somehow.

I started this sketch out with a light sketch of the tripod. I wanted that as my base. I then formed the panda around and when I saw fit to add the boy in the chair I realized I needed to do some prep work. I needed projection lines and vanishing points. I've always been proud of myself for attending that day of art class back in grade school. So I did them in the best I knew how and the best I could remember only to find I had completely disregarded the already somewhat drawn panda w/ tripod. (Get yours today). To put in one way: I made them float . Physically speaking there was no possible way that tripod was going to stand upright on this plane I created. Instead of switching gear and drawing a falling panda I decided I had to do something about the legs of the tripod and chair. I think it worked out. But, the playing field of this drawing is still skewed.
I ran into all sorts of trouble when I drew the building too close. So naturally when I deviate far enough away from the re…

The last day of the "24 Hour Sketch - Halloween" series.

Let me put it this way, bigger is not always better. This is 8.5x11. Most of you 24 Hour Sketch "fanatics" may not know that the majority of the drawings here are on 2.5x4 sheets. Truthfully, I'm not too fond of this. Though some might say, "this is good." I'll agree but I can't shake one thing. It didn't turn out like I wanted it to. A lot of it was improvised and with that I'll let you figure out how this drawing is different from the photo. I wasn't trying to make it photo realistic so I don't really care that it's different. It's the way it's different that bugs me.

Anyhow, taking a photo of this was tricky. Graphite tends to reflect a lot of light, and this awesome yellow light in the room doesn't provide for a soft flood. I ended up taking the picture with no light, save for what sun was coming in through the window and over exposed it through filt…

Day 13 of the "24 Hour Sketch - Halloween" series. And what was supposed to be the last day of the Halloween series ending with the unlucky #13 is not. Seems I have the unfortunate inability to count days on a calendar.

So here he is, the masked killer from the Halloween series, "Michael Myers".

Check back tomorrow, I've got a special treat for some of you die-hards out there. I just hope I do the subject matter some justice. It's a band dear to my heart, and in my opinion the quintessential icons of horror.

Day 12 of the "24 Hour Sketch - Halloween" series. BEWARE! This is the scariest of them all! It's a kurticature request! For those of you who don't know Kurt… this is Kurt.