Sketchbook Tuesday

I used to see this old gentleman in the many cafes I haunted in San Cristobal de las Casas, Mexico. Slowly sinking in his seat, he would nod off now and again.

"You can live to be a hundred if you give up all the things that make you want to live to be a hundred."

Woody Allen

Sketchbook Tuesday

I've been working on other projects of late; however, you should be seeing some new still lifes in oil soon, very soon.

"I learn it every day of my life, learn it with pain I am grateful for: patience is everything!"

Rainer Maria Rilke

Sketchbook Tuesday

My cat died recently. She was a darn good cat. Sad.


This is what I look like when I'm drawing you. (Ears sticking out too far.)

"It seems to me madness to wake up in the morning and do something other than paint, considering that one may not wake up the following morning."

Frank Auerbach

Sketchbook Tuesday

More drawings of people sitting in cafes.


Mostly back views.


It's easier to draw people when they're not looking at you.


You'll find a great website on artists' sketchbooks here.

"Remember, a line cannot exist alone; it always brings a companion along. Do remember that one line does nothing; it is only in relation to another that it creates a volume."

Henri Matisse

Sketchbook Tuesday

A few watercolors from one of my moleskine sketchbooks.

"Alone, and without any reference to his neighbours, without any interference, the artist can fashion a beautiful thing; and if he does not do it solely for his own pleasure, he is not an artist at all."

Oscar Wilde

Still Life w/Chinese Painting

5" x 7" Oil on panel. (Purchase Info)

"Nothing is more useful to man that those arts which have no utility."

Ovid

Sketchbook Tuesday

The above "found" still lifes were drawn in a Mexican cafe.




I have a penchant for 3B pencils.

"One must always draw, draw with the eyes, when one cannot draw with a pencil."

Balthus

Buenos Aires Flashback

Four small still lifes on a single panel from my days in Buenos Aires.


Each still life measures about 3 1/2 x 4 3/4 inches.


This one is my favorite of the bunch. Not strictly an alla prima, I think it took two or three sittings to complete.


"When I look at a body it gives me choice of what to put in a painting, what will suit me and what won't. There is a distinction between fact and truth. Truth has an element of revelation about it. If something is true, it does more than strike one as merely being so."

Lucian Freud

2 Watercolors

Here's a couple of watercolors I did a while back.

"It is not by his mixing and choosing, but by the shapes of his colors, and the combination of those shapes, that we recognize the colorist. Color becomes significant only when it becomes form."

Clive Bell

Red Dot

The beginning: drawing the forms with gray paint and turp. (My easel was made by the good people at Open Box M.)


The finished 8" x 10" alla prima painting. (sold)

"Remember that a painting -- before it is a battle horse, a nude model, or some anecdote -- is essentially a flat surface covered with colours assembled in a certain order."

Maurice Denis

Sketchbook Tuesday

Although I'm nocturnal by nature, I do occasionally stumble outside into the light of day and draw cityscapes.


The drawings above were done during my year in South America.


This one was drawn in Chiapas, Mexico.


And this one, in good ol' California.

"Beautiful colours can be bought in the shops on the Riato, but good drawing can only be bought from the casket of the artist's talent with patient study and nights without sleep."

Tintoretto

Sketchbook Tuesday

A favorite pastime of mine is drawing people in cafes.


Some people fidget a lot and others are like statues.


The trick to getting people on the page is to draw them fast before they get up and leave or change their posture.


Luckily, a lot can be said with just a few lines.

Some other artists who are handy with a pencil:
Tommy Kane
Danny Gregory
Katherine Tyrrell

"Rough sketches, which are born in an instant in the heat of inspiration, express the idea of their author in a few strokes, while too much effort and diligence sometimes sops the vitality and powers of those who never know when to leave off."

Giorgio Vasari

Sketchbook Tuesday

Today I'm spotlighting my Moleskine sketchbooks. The above drawing was done with my unbreakable Koh-I-Noor 0.7mm mechanical pencil.


These bags of coffee beans were drawn with my Pentel brush pen and Niji Waterbrushes.


Ditto for this drawing of a girl studying in a cafe.


Moleskine also makes a decent watercolor sketchbook. I like the small ones.


My sketch box surrounded by a few Moles.

Here's a blog dedicated to Moleskines.

"When I make my drawings... the path traced by my pencil on the sheet of paper is, to some extent, analogous to the gesture of a man groping his way in the darkness."

Alberto Giacometti

100 Poker Chips

8" x 10" Oil on panel. (Purchase Info)

A big thank you to Nag on the Lake for blogging about Alla Prima.

"The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak."

Hans Hofmann

Sketchbook Tuesday

I've been filling up sketchbooks for almost twenty years now. All totaled, I have just over sixty books.


I like to experiment with different types of sketchbooks but my favorite by far is the brown-papered "Earthbound" by Cachet.




They're perfect for making that quick sketch in a cafe...


...or drawing a still life in the studio.

"We should talk less and draw more. I personally should like to renounce speech altogether and, like organic Nature, communicate everything I have to say in sketches."

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Shades of Grey

5.5" x 7.5" Ink wash drawing on Fabriano paper. (Purchase Info)

"Art is not the application of a canon of beauty but what the instinct and the brain can conceive beyond any canon. When we love a woman we don't start measuring her limbs."

Pablo Picasso

1 ink, 2 watercolors

6" x 6" Brush pen ink drawing on Sennelier paper. (Purchase Info)


A tiny watercolor (2.5" x 3.5").


5.5" x 7.5" Watercolor on paper. (Purchase Info)

"With watercolour, you can't cover up the marks. There's the story of the construction of the picture, and then the picture might tell another story as well."

David Hockney

Ink & Watercolor

Two ink drawings made with my trusty Pentel brush pen.


3.5" x 5.5" Watercolor on Fabriano paper. (Purchase Info)

"It is by great economy of means that one arrives at simplicity of expression."

Henri Cartier-Bresson

Watercolor Sketches

Here's two small sketches on a 7.5" x 5.5" sheet.


Pay no attention to the blue blotches.

Two watercolor sketchers that I like:
Enrique Flores
Elizabeth Perry

"I have no ideas about what the paintings imply about the world. I don’t think that’s a painter’s business. He just paints paintings without a conscious reason."

Jasper Johns

Still Life w/Ceramic Creamer

5.5" x 7.5" Watercolor on Arches Paper. (Purchase Info)

Natasha Wallace has created a wonderful virtual gallery filled with the works of John Singer Sargent. Her website, JSS Gallery, has hundreds of Sargent's oils, drawings, and watercolors. Check it out.

"You can't do sketches enough. Sketch everything and keep your curiosity fresh."

John Singer Sargent