36 Cord

          Did this little sketch at the auto show in Bartl Hall, Kansas City back in early March.  This seems to have become a yearly trip- instigated by our oldest grandkid.  We have a good time. We had the biggest group ever - 7 or 8 of us for part of the day.   This year I took along a small sketch pad, but this is about the only one of 4 or 5 sketches that is worth saving.  The car has a lot of character so it was not too hard getting a sketch with some character as well...
          Done with a 6B lead in a holder in a 9 x 12 inch pad.  The image on my laptop is about the same size as the original.

outbuilding & bales

             This painting, done from also from a road trip image that jumped from the landscape as we passed by to my drawing board at 70 mph or so.  At least that is pretty much as I remember it in my head.  This was not a winter scene and so what's the white doing there??  But this is transparent water color and half the magic of it are the places where the paint aint!
             9x14 image size.

Sorry about the Thumbnail page mess up on the last post.
You should be able to see it today.
And there is a detail of today's painting as well as the previous one
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early sun

             Some of these w/c are done from sketches actually collected on road trips to see family.  And this is one.  The basic layout of the house with trees in the front came from such a sketch.  The slope of the hill and the distant tree line may as well.  The sky was inspired by a recent sky that I remembered.  The scene reminds me of that time of day when you can stretch your legs outside with a bit of peace & quiet.  
             If you click on the thumbnails tab you can see a closeup of this painting that may help show a little more detail.
         

Angled outbuilding

           

              Though this watercolor was not actually done outside, the sketch from which it came is one of about 4 or 5 of this place done while on one of my peddles around that section of forgotten country.  It may have a little more of the flavor of some of my early paintings than most of the w/c sketches I have done recently.  Some of my kids have been saying I should start posting paintings, and this is one of the first reasonable ones I have done since (sorta) retiring.
             The format is 9" x 12".

Ruth reading

                  So it may look a little young for a 93 year old lady.  This quick sketch, done with a half-dry sharpie- gets down only some of the posture as Gramma is waiting at the Sr. Center for lunch.  So I have taken to totting around a couple old markers just for such sketches as this.  They keep better than pencil, and they digitize a little easier too.

Overnighter

          Our neighbor has lived longer on this street than anyone, moving in when their house was built in the '60s.  She is now the matriarch of her family. (As well, as I accuse her, of being the law-and-order for the neighborhood.) Occasionally some outlying family may have overnight business in town in which case she would put them up for the night.  This black jeep would show up some evenings and so I eventually had the notion of doing this sketch.

North Lawrence revisited

           Someone is redoing this house, though I have not been by lately to see what it looks like now it looked as if it was going to still have pretty much the same look as it had for years.    This jpg was taken last September; the drawing says it was done June 28th of last year.   I have done a number of pieces with this property as the motif. Winter, summer, ink and pencil.  Some places always have potential.  This drawing was done with a Pentel .9mm 2B lead.

chipper chimenea

             Matthew acquired this large clay colored chimenea a few years ago.  I guess because it had the chunk missing and a friend did not want to move it. It always catches my interest. Something about its shape, texture and the shadows it creates. The contrast of the smooth black frame  and the earthen texture of the pottery are interesting.
             We sat around this thing one cool evening last month with family and friends watching the coals go down long after the sun was gone for the day.
             Another sketch done with the chissel point 4B pencil.

wintered in

         
            A winter sketch done from the safety of the kitchen window. It was the morning after an early February storm.  The wooden cart, tarped and buried under a few inches of snow sits in the path of the squirrels coming from the north garden area.  They would hop up out of the snow sometimes leaving a small bit of untouched powder, to land a few inches along their way, and repeat the process again. The neighbor's cat on the other hand just plowed through the snow...  The farther you get from this drawing, the better it looks.  Don't look too close!
           Done with a chisel point 4B pencil.

cart wheel

           This little study was the final one of about 6 or 8 in which I was defining the relationship between the 16 spokes of this old wheel. The spokes on each end of the hub form an octagon where they attach to the hub- that is there are 8 spokes on each end of the hub set at 45 deg. to each other; but the spokes on the inside of the hub are rotated 22.5 deg. to  the spokes on the outside of the hub. So 22.5 deg becomes the rotation between each spoke on the rim. Ole!  The next step is to get the angles right at the outside end of the spokes where they bend to a perpendicular position to the surface of the rim. This is a much simpler rim than say a bicycle rim which has many more overlapping spokes.
           Seems to me that the bit of distortion in the perspective of a drawing helps to give it some personality. It makes it obvious that it was not done from a photo, or at least less likely that it was done from a photo...  In earlier years I have done a lot of ink drawings from photos.  Now though I sometimes use one as reference taken on location when I do a sketch, I just cannot work from a photo as my primary source.  It is much more productive and expressive to work on location or from reference sketches, such as the one above.