March 2011
33 posts
I don't know about you, but I need several nice...
And yet there’s never enough to share with the people who need it most.
February 2011
31 posts
Should a grown woman spend this much time idly...
I will stipulate that she should not. Unless she is Sally Cruikshank. And yet, here we are.
MISC. DOODLES VI
I’ve actually been drawing a good deal, but most of what I have done lately is pure practice, not up to the highly polished standards of this blog.
A concept sketch for a swamp entity; I’m saving her for a time when I can actually draw swamps well.
Frequently held internal dialogue no. 582.
MISC. DOODLES V
I’m just surprised I’ve been alive this long without doodling this.
Dunno who he is or where, but it started with the spear. A lot of my doodles start with spears. I like spears.
Yes, as a matter of fact, I have been drinking
And I only had doodle time on the train back from the party.
Nonetheless!
I am shocked at your lack of plumed anthropomorphic snake facilities in this establishment.
He wouldn’t really have a warped spear. I’m sure of it.
It is really best never to inquire why I am smiling.
MISC. DOODLES IV
Do you suppose the snakes all think about the same thing that she does? Do they always agree?
Another doodled depiction of an unwise proposition, I do not know what.
A guy standing outside. Not much of anywhere to go.
Nunc pro tunc
When you are attempting to draw a thing before midnight, it is best not to try it while lying on a soft bed next to a sleepy dog. Passed right out, and just woke up. All I have to offer tonight as a consequence is a square untrustworthy man. Tomorrow I shall do better!
MISC. DOODLES III
Who can say.
A favorite way to start doodling a lady’s face, for me, is to begin with the brim of her hat.
Senora's dance has no title
For the past few years, I have had — well, “muse” is a word I hate, and “avatar” is beaten to death — but I have had someone special to me. She has been dead for many years, and indeed she died without knowing what she was to become. She was Elena Hoyos, a twenty-two-year-old Cuban Floridian who died in 1922, and … well, just look. Despite all she had...
Manly, manly hair
Georgetown Preparatory School junior varsity basketball, 1911. Here is the coach and the player to his right. Men in those days, real men, beefy men like this guy whose neck is straining at his collar, were unafraid to have this kind of hair.
The hair turned out well, but otherwise I’m not happy with it. The drawing has all the boy’s awkwardness but none of his youth and...
What can I tell you, man
An hour of medieval European figure doodling
That was all I had time for tonight. I never used to like medieval European art, but I’ve gained a taste for it, and I mean to learn to imitate the style.
Medieval figures are often making odd-looking and improbable gestures with their fingers. It’s kind of endearing, as are the terrible, uncomfortable-looking hats.
Colonized by hair
I suspect this of being a dwarf in drag.
I was struck by a certain sadness about this lady, who appears to be under the control of her hair. If it were a B. Kliban cartoon, or I had more time tonight, the hair would remove itself bodily from her in the next panel and walk away with little “pad pad pad” noises.
Angrity dude says dangity dang
I was flipping through a J. Jill catalog and wondering: what grown woman wears jumpers? I was happy to see the last of them in sixth grade. If you are in an overall-wearing context in the twenty-first century, you are free to wear overalls instead of jumpers, which will ease your work considerably. Why on earth would you wear a jumper instead?
I mention this because I don’t have any...
Venus de Brassempouy, ca. 25,000 BP
I was thinking about the Venus of Brassempouy today, a mammoth ivory carving from the Upper Paleolithic period, one of the first known representations of a human face. Here is a quick doodle and a studied sketch. I don’t really like the way they came out, but onward.
It is unclear whether the head-covering is meant to represent a headdress or simply a schematic depiction of braids or...
Actually I love Valentine's Day
So I am looking forward to it, and its candy sales. Anyone who really knows me could tell you that I am really an awful, terrible romantic. The operative words, of course, are “awful” and “terrible.” For example, I am a huge fan of the traditional Child Ballads, because I don’t consider it a proper love song unless somebody dies. One of my favorites is Child...
Your call is important to me
I’m always a little afraid that, if I’m too preoccupied, I’ll answer the phone with something I was just preoccupied with. Anything that preoccupies me is, invariably, really unpleasant.
(I will never actually do this, precisely because I worry about it, but there you are.)
MISC. DOODLES II
Design for a stickpin in poor taste.
An angular emissary.
Sinister hair.
HANDS ARE BASTARDS
If you are an artist, you do not need to be told it, and if you are not an artist, check out the next illustration you see and look how likely it is that the artist has obscured as much of the hand as possible. Hands are tough. I set myself to practice hands for an hour.
Yes! This took an hour! Even the cartoony ones! It’s because you can’t see the erasures, except in the...
Nothing special today
Just a quick sketch of an old bronze whistle I found half-buried in the sand. I’ll disinfect it and see if it still makes a nice sound.
Federal Army clerk, 1863
From the far right of this photograph, Aquia Creek Landing, Virginia. The guy serving tea is the most interesting subject in the photo, but this gentleman had such interesting clothes and seemed so present to me. Of course it’s not nearly finished, but I only had so long, and I know I need to practice clothing folds — which this ill-fitting suit has in plenty — and hands.
I stress that I am not actually proud of this, but...
Teaching myself to work with color. I don’t own any good software to the purpose — I don’t know where to start with software, and I don’t have a tablet anyway — so it is all manual. Takes a while to do, as I am figuring it out on the fly, so I only have the one color thing today.
It’s a stylized, ukiyo-e-inspired Winnowill. She was the most interesting...
SHOGGOTH WEATHER
Snow after snow after snow – it’s definitely been shoggoth weather. So I started drawing one.
I believe his name is Gary.
If any artist can really evoke a shoggoth, it is certainly not going to be me, but I like playing with it as an abstract design element. A border for, say, a shower announcement or what have you.
I am off today but nonetheless a thing.
As I say, I copied a number of Jack Hamm drawings from his invaluable anatomy books for artists, but I got tired of the pasteurized ’50s expressions on his models’ faces, and would change them.
MISC.
What? I’m up, I’m up.
A perfectly good albino constrictor going to waste.
I no longer know who these people were, if I ever did, which seems a shame.
PSST
I like sketching pairs of people having a conversation I can’t quite imagine.
BUNDLED UP
Drawing a lot of miserable-looking people in hoods lately. I suppose it’s the weather.
No one wearing a hood really wants to be wearing it. Not even me, and I wore a cloak every day for years. Your basic hooded person would rather be somewhere it was warm enough, or non-mysterious enough, not to wear a hood.
ALWAYS WITH THE HISTORY
Queen Tiye is tired of your crap, son. You better get on it.
Still been meaning to pick myself up a juni-hito with a silkscreened Catalhoyuk design.
Was once constantly inspired by the Bacchae, and Dionysus as ho Xanthos, the Blond Gentleman.
hy136 asked: I'm curious to know more about Tiare and Rokea—seems like there's a lot of interesting backstory!
FOLKS WHO COME VISIT
When I draw characters that I invented, they’re rarely good enough drawings to share. Still, I do it a good deal, just to spend some time getting to know them and what they’re thinking about, like Tiare here.
Sometimes, they just appear when I draw, and I never figure out who they were.
This was a tabletop game character I wanted so badly to play, ages ago – a female...
THE DEAD, WON'T YOU?
Mummy bundle (an Incan custom).
Underneath is written “Veronica,” but I’m pretty sure that’s not his name.
