South Park south

I figured there would be a place around South Park where I could sit and sketch something of interest. Ta da! Here it is. I actually returned to this place 3 times.  After about 90 minutes of drawing on the first afternoon, the threatening storm finally chased me off with some sprinkles.  Only a couple landed on the paper - and that was through the open car window on the way home. This place attracted my attention  for a number of reasons.  The porch, the roof line, the view down the side of the place, the car, the bike, and on and on... Yah, I know I am not 'sposta get sidetracked by all the details.  So where do I stop?  I had some time, a pencil, and a little white paper left in front of me. There musta been a little breeze too, as the mosquitoes were not pestering me.       Most of the first session was getting the  basic lines down, then I made a stop another day to check on some of the shading. The kid who owns the toad in the driveway walked by and commented how nice it was to find this place to live, and that, "you even got my car in it!"  Then a couple days later on the last stop to finish the drawing Stephanie came with me as I was able to pretty much complete it.
As you can see this was started on the 18th of August about 5 pm when the temp was 78 degrees. Done on Strathmore Sketch 60 lb paper with my trusty Pentel .9mm B lead.

O'Connell bridge

 I was trying to remember when this painting was done.  Sometime the last week or two of June, as it was before "South wetlands". So it was late in June.   I had been thinking that something like this would be interesting, and I had been by here a few days before this.  It was a nice hot day with little breeze and little cloud cover too.  This is less than two miles from home by bicycle and so late afternoon I was able to make it to the spot. I liked the relationship of all the elements together. The bridge, the truck and the cranes sitting on either side of the bridge with their booms aloft. The 2 warning signs on the ends of the vintage bridge framing the new construction....                                 This 11" x 15" was painted directly over a pencil sketch in a Strathmore 140lb watercolor pad.  That is a nice way for me to work.  Gives the spontaneity of a drawing while doing most of the color work in the studio.  Below is a detail of some of the equipment.

connections

This was one of the more interesting sketches to do while sitting at the terminal in Minneapolis.  We had just flown over Rebok's house as we came in. We had only a few minutes to kill. These 2 fellas were sitting where the pilot had been eating his burrito. They were having a lot more pleasant time than their expressions would indicate. They were probably 25 feet away from us but I could hear their accent well enough to guess they were eastern European.

An hour and a half later while waiting at the baggage claim in Kansas City I was standing next to them so I asked where they were from.  One was from Hungary, and the other from Lithuania. They asked me were to find some food and so I told them where the map was of the terminal.  They asked if we had been in Kansas long.  Only since 1970.  After that our bags came so I did not get to ask why they were here. I assumed they were students...

'95 B4

I have had a couple notions about pieces to do that involve my old truck.  This is the first full scale one I have done.  The weather has been almost perfect- better than any Kansas August that I can recall.  Days starting in the 50's & 60's and ending below the mid 80's -sometimes down in the lower 70's.  Wow.  I picked this truck up to replace a '94 that was nearly dragging on the street.  A tremendous upgrade considering it had both a/c and an automatic tranny.  Power steering and power windows were also an upgrade.  Anywho, it was very nice to sit out with the mosquitoes in the perfectly still weather and do some sketching without even leaving home...  If there were only a little breeze it would'a held the little buuggers at bay, but alas...  Even now as I write this sitting on the front porch, the DEET I put on earlier is not stopping the villains from attacking my elbows and hands. (Sorry about the rant!) The truck has served me well; and I needn't worry about someone driving off with my subject as sometimes happens. I just backed the pick up down the driveway to the street, cocked the wheels, and was ready to go.  Done in a mostly used up pad of Strathmore sketch 60 lb, 11" x 14" paper.  It always amazes me just how much I learn when drawing. I always see something I did not notice before. It is crazy what a minuscule little chunk of graphite can do to a piece of paper. (Just doused my arms again with "Off", and now the mosquitoes are attacking my ears!  But I refuse to go in!)
Here below is a detail of the center of the drawing.

South wetlands.

 The date was the 4th of July as the note on the side indicates.  I headed down the new Haskell Ave. just before it opened.  Took the old road back west that leads through the wetlands. Just as I was getting on the dirt road off Haskell I met a fella as old as I who had just come through the way I was considering going. He on his bicycle and I on mine. Never having been that way before, I was glad to get a little direction from him.  After a wander down through some beautiful country I had not been in before - mostly grass and dirt trails- I came upon the new road replacing Louisiana through the wetlands.  This is the painting that resulted from the sketch I did while sitting on the bike. While sketching I was watching as a small group of grown kids came out to the bridge from father south and were doing some fireworks.
   
Below is a detail of the painting.

clear harbor

          This is about the only drawing I did while actually in Three Hills.  The Super 8 motel actually sits where a farm sat 50 years ago. The motel is a happening place. There are always people in there. From bikers on a weekend explore, to Hutterites arranging rides around the country. It happened to be a long weekend and the motel was crawling with families and kids- some were going to the Dinosaur museum in Drumheller. That is some 25 miles to the south, in Alberta desert country.   This was early one morning.  I took a walk out around the parking lot, and this is what I found. Some truck driver found an overnight harbor for his rig, in the parking lot at the motel. There are no real harbors close, but I am sure there are reclamation projects to be done. Or maybe this was headed to the west coast, one Province away.  The pine trees in this part of Alberta have a different feel than the cedar trees of Kansas. The prairie is rolling and yellow green from the maturing canola, mixed with wheat and barley fields in a latitude where they get enough rain to need little if any irrigation.   I do not remember seeing barley fields since helping with harvest in south west Nebraska in the early 1960's.
          This vacuum tank sitting on this lowboy looks like it is made for sucking up polluted sea water.  What you do with it after that, I have no idea.  I made a note of one of the warning signs posted on the back that warns operators or maintenance people of one of the dangers working on this piece of equipment.  You can also see a sketchy reproduction of the logo that was on the door of the semi tractor with the waves below and the sea gull above.
          This is a lot of jabbering for a small sketch!

face time

Needless to say this sketch brought some chuckles from the folk sitting next to us.  Nice thing when someone is phone channeling-  they have no idea what is going on around them!  This guy plopped in a seat as the terminal was beginning to fill with passengers for 3 different flights.  He seemed unwilling to shift his pose, let alone walk about some.  So I could sketch on; and so I did.  I guess it is nice to have a ledge on which to rest your phone so the fingers are the only thing working. Well, hopefully the brain too!
One lady sat down to see what I was up to. She was returning home after helping her daughter with a new baby.  One kid who has been working in Tuscon for a year was headed to Calgary- arriving at 10:10 pm - and then renting a car for an 8 hour drive into Saskatchewan for a wedding. The drive included a little sleep at his folks house, plus a detour to pick up a friend.  We were glad we had a room reserved near the Calgary airport.
I was surprised at how simple it was to find places and people to sketch in an airport terminal. Cannot say I have ever tried it before. Usually at home it is a bit more disconcerting to find a place where I am comfortable sketching people - or where I think they are ok with someone sketching them.  One nice thing about the airport terminal is that there is such a variety of people, and most are "in their own world" paying little attention to anyone else.

Skychefs

       

            These common views of a plane nosed into the terminal with the crews buzzing around both sides and the boarding ramp snuggled up to the side turned out to be not as common as I thought. This view with the mountains behind was about my only chance for such a sketch.  There were no views like this on our 2 hour wait to board in Calgary.  We were jammed into a terminal half its normal size due to construction, and for some reason they also had the windows screened off about 6 or 7' up so no one could see out.  Though I had some time to sketch, there would be none of the planes prepping for their next flight.  So I had to settle for sketching fellow passengers, and at very close range. They sometimes give you dirty looks when they realize you are committing them to paper- especially when they see how uncomplimentary the sketches are.          
           As far as the subject of this drawing is concerned, it is interesting just how much can be jammed in around the plane.  The airline's goal is to make up for a late arrival by squeezing the cleanup and re stocking into as short a time as possible.  They have to unload all the checked bags and reload a whole new set as well.

heavy lunch

     
           We have spent the last week and a half recovering from a hectic end of July and beginning of August.  By the time of this sketch we were waiting for a connecting flight in Minneapolis when this pilot showed up with his dinner.  I would suppose him to be on a tight schedule perhaps.  You can see the wrap around his burrito or whatever with his jowls drooling in it. You can also see his black Captain's cap stuffed between the bars on his luggage.  No, I did not do him justice in the weight department.  I cannot ever remember seeing a pilot this chubby- not that I fly enough to know if there are some.  But I couldn't resist stretching the girth just a little. Seems like a perfect definition of the phrase, "feeding your face".                      
           I had taken along a 5" x 9" Strathmore 60 lb pad of 100 sheets which gave me ample space for sketching on the way north without being too cumbersome in the backpack.  This is actually one of the last full sketches I did before the trip ended.

"skiff a snow"

          It has been over two weeks since anything has been posted here; but I have an excuse or two: one week at Ozark Family Camp (as we have done for 36 years) and part of this week at a High School reunion 1500 miles from home.                                                                                                 Just in case you are dreaming of some cooler weather, maybe this drawing will help.  It was done from the living room window on a chilly February day about noon, if you can tell by the shadows. There had been just a "skiff" of snow as Gramma Ruth would say.  When the neighbors backed out they left these trails of dark crossing the shadows. It was one of those irresistible scenes that just gotta be put to paper. For some reason or other the simple pencil drawing reproduced pretty well...   Don't always have that good fortune.   5" x 9" format.

Stella

                Did this small drawing  for the neighbor as a gift to her daughter. It was a birthday gift; Stella was her baby. The date of her birthday is the same as mine, so I could remember when it needed to get done!  It was done from a photo, so there was not a great deal of resources to get creative with the drawing, but it turned out ok.  All pencil of course. 2B and 4B with 0.9 and larger leads. Finished size about 8" x 10".

Rare vagrant from Africa

          This sketch is of the corner of a planter beside our front walkway.  One of those done just to catch the shadows as they were. Drawings like this are good for training the hand to be quick before the mind forgets what it saw or the sun moves too far along its course.                                                            
The bird on the top came with Grammie's sister when she returned from Africa.  The miniature mail box came from a friend up the street who for some years made made stuff like this in his shop.  We have other stuff around here that came from him.  The square links of chain came from a load of "heavy shorts" purchased as scrap and used for counterweight in a Northwest crane.  The wood for the planter came from the deck of a quarry scale when it was replaced with steel.   Oh, you didn't want all that info?
         The drawing itself was done in one of the numerous sketch pads kicking around the place waiting for a change to get used again.

rain stacking

         
             Yes it is a rainy morning for sure, just like many this summer.  After rising early for a quick walk that ended up not so short, we waited around here for the storm to arrive.  The sky got pretty dark, and the storm finally arrived just when Grammie was leaving, so out came our biggest umbrella.   Just before the storm broke, I had retrieved these 2 small chairs from the porch and stacked them inside the door beside the piano to wait for the wind to die.  Looking for something to do before the weather cleared there sat these 2 posing for a picture so to speak.    Well I had been thinking for some time that they needed drawing.  As usual, I noticed the negative space that defines so well the relationship of the various parts in a visual sense.   You know, negative space is a vacuum that sucks my pencil to it!   In this case, draw the negative spaces around (and through) the chairs, and you just about have the chairs.   (Another lecture?? ple-e-e-e-e-s-s-e!- -- )      
             This drawing was done on a Plexiglas drawing board with 11" x 17" cheap photocopy paper clipped to it.

Near Clarksville

           The thing that caught my eye about this scene was the relationship between the two buildings, especially the roofs with the contrast in color and tone, with 2 contrasting fences leading off into the distance.  This sort of thing is what makes a good focal point of a painting.  I think the rear building is actually the new home built on the old place.
           It is easy to miss catching the focal point in a sketch by being distracted with other details.  They are all so interesting!  Yet if you let yourself be distracted by detail you will probably not get across the point of emphasis that originally caught your attention.
           This painting was done with (primarily) Windsor & Newton water colors on 11"x 15" Canson 140 lb paper.  It was done in the late winter from a sketch drawn late last summer on a trip to Middle Georgia.

           Once again you can see closeup details of this painting on the Thumbnails link.

floor lamp

       
Here is another simple sketch but not one done 35 years ago.  Yup, I am switching between paintings, finished drawings, and sketches with no apparent plan-  just what seems to be interesting enough to post.   If you have been in our living room you may recognize this relic.  Not sure where this lamp came from, but it has not been around here as long as we have.  Showed up sometime in the last 20 years maybe.    It took me a bit to get this light pencil to reproduce well enough to make it worth posting. The lines and the shadow created by the shade make for interesting sketching.  I was trying to catch the contrast between the negative space of the main shadow and the bright lines of the brass lamp as they cross the shadow.

Tin Topper

Here is a watercolor done last winter when the weather was restricting somewhat outdoor work.  The sketch was from my pile of thumbnails done on the road, but not sure where or when.  The lines of the  tin roof and the shadow working its way across them caught my eye.  Even with a quick pen and paper, I often do not catch very well the first impression that caught my eye. Is me memory really that short?  "Aye, aye matey."            The detail posted on the Thumbnails page may help you get a feel for the process, but don't look too close...

below Midland Junction

Here is another painting that was done from a sketch.  The sketch was done on the way home from the shop one day when I was hoping to add a little more creativity to the day.  It was the fall of the year, as the corn was brown and waiting for harvest.
This piece is about 12" x 15" done on Canson 90lb. paper.
You can check out a close-up detail on the Thumbnails page.

knob hill

This was a fairly fast watercolor done from a pencil sketch that was also a quickie.  The idea here was to turn a sketch on file into a complete painting. This is good practice for a fluid painting with a lot of wet on wet moving into adjacent areas of color, yet leaving enough white paper to maintain a bright and airy impression. The lines of movement are pretty strong and it is clear where the lighting is coming from.  These are the kinds of things you look for in a layout.  Easier to do when the composition is kept simple rather than when there is a lot of detail.  Let the accidents of the water and paint suggest some of the detail you were intending.       Done on 9" x 12 " Canson 140 lb paper.  You can see a detail closeup of the house if you switch to the Thumbnails page above.

sketch

Here is a sketch somebody may find interesting.  Done some 30 years ago, it was stuck in some old stuff I was sorting.  Gramma's present initials and our daughter's former initials are the same.  These, I suppose you can tell, are not -at 93- Gramma Ruth's legs!!       This 3" x 5"  pencil drawing was done on some cheap paper, and is showing its age, so the photography is not too good.

Fairground stone

A quick trip just looking for a spot to do some drawing brought me to the Douglas County fairgrounds.  The old barns always make a good drawing, but today I was focusing on this stone building; has to be the oldest on the property. Rumor is they are going to update the fairgrounds. You can about bet that this and some of the barns will have to go, so better get some more drawing done.      Done in a 9" x 12" pad with a extra fine Sharpie and some pencil shading.