I was in Haymarket for a doctor appointment, and since I wasn’t going to work that day I figured I’d kill some time to wait out morning traffic before heading back home. So I enjoyed some breakfast at Hidden Julle’s Cafe, which was good. I also had bulletproof coffee for the first time. Surprisingly tasty! And then, in desperate need of a nap but knowing I’d rather sit in a cafe than in my car, I drew the flower arrangement on the table.
This is my mother. After seeing how quickly I was able to draw my dead artists and my selfies, she requested that I draw her. Rather than make her stand around for an hour while I figured out her face, I snapped a quick cell phone photo and sat down later to draw.
Most of the reason I like to draw dead artists is because they don’t complain if I make them look wonky. So I was extra careful on this picture, telling myself that if I screwed it up, I didn’t have to show her. But it turned out okay, if I do say so myself. It helps to have such a beautiful model.
Koosje Koene is the master of the selfie sketch. Inspired by her sillier self portraits, I snapped a few quick pics of myself with my cell phone one night and drew one of them:
Does it look much like me? I dunno. Some folks seem to have recognized it. But it sure was fun to draw. A friend asked me to draw a smiling selfie (she said I wasn’t recognizable without a smile, which is sweet of her), so I did:
I overdid the chin a little bit but overall I really like it. But you know I couldn’t leave it at that:
The show through from the next page is pretty bad, but oh well. It’s just a sketchbook. If I cared more I’d take the time to do more post-processing. But too much of that sort of tedium causes me to make this exact face. We try to avoid that in my house.
I was wandering downtown Manassas and decided to take advantage of the lovely weather to draw the train station there. I sat in the gazebo across the street, which seems a common location to take photographs. To be honest, I’m not at all happy with this; I’m simply not very good at drawing buildings. But you know what? That’s why we practice.
Tommy Kane, one of the teachers of Sketchbook Skool, is someone whose work I find profoundly inspiring. He has an ongoing project called Draw Tommy Kane, where a bunch of folks draw the same photo of Mr. Kane. It’s neat to see all the different styles, and I like my own contribution enough to feel proud to be among the ranks.
I visited the National Arboretum with a friend and was enchanted by the bonsai exhibit. Alas, I am still not quite comfortable sketching while someone is sitting next to me not doing anything else, so I rushed these. Still, it was a pleasant (if rather too warm) day.
DC Urban Sketcher Guido was kind enough to organize a visit to the Dupont Underground. It was a streetcar station until the 1960s, and save for a failed food court in the 1990s, it’s been unused ever since. It’s currently under construction with plans to become an art gallery and other interesting space, but we were allowed down there for two hours to draw.
It’s really nifty down there. Filthy and with terrible lighting, but still cool as hell. Most of my companions drew amazing shadowed landscapes. I drew little stuff:
And, of course, a couple of my fellow sketchers:
And in case you thought I was kidding about that whole “filthy” part:
In my current Sketchbook Skool course, I learned a technique called drawing fast and slow. You start with a fat medium, like a big brush of watercolors, and draw an object very quickly. Then you take something finer and draw in the details. I chose to draw my mixer. I didn’t have any paints handy, so I used a Zig Clean Color Real Brush waterbase marker. For the detail work I used a Prismacolor Premier 08, which is larger than I usually use, but felt right for this.
Every year, BCinDC (my local BookCrossing group) gives away free books at the Gaithersburg Book Festival. After getting my 227 books all ready to go, I decided to draw the boxes and bags and bins. That purple bin has been my BookCrossing bin for years, and has served me very well.
By the way, we as a group brought 2100 books and came home with fewer than 10. That, my friends, is a good day.
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