Doodling on a Jet Plane

I flew to the Washington DC area this week; this is what I did on the flight home to Dallas. The plane was nearly empty, so I had a whole row of seats to myself. Very relaxing. Good for me, bad for American Airlines. I got the idea for this type of drawing from the book Keys to Drawing with Imagination by Bert Dodson. Dodson calls this escher tiling:

The object of this technique is to make a drawing that has no background spaces; every shape is an object that fits into every other shape.

I made up a game where I had to copy images from the Sky Mall catalog in the seat pocket in front of me. You know, the catalog with things no one really needs? Like the King Tut Life-Sized Sarcophagus Cabinet for $850?

I flipped through the catalog until I came to an image that appealed to me, then I fitted it into the drawing. Very relaxing and childlike. Doing art for no reason at all.

Describing Form with Line #2

This contour drawing is based on the drawing Woman Seated on the Ground, Seen from the Back by Jean Antoine Watteau (1684 - 1721).

Describing Form with Line

This is an exercise from Keys to Drawing with Imagination. The objective is to use contour lines to model 3 dimensional form.

Sleeping Dogs

Fun with markers.

Waiting for JFK

For the past few weeks, I have been distracted by work (i.e., my livelihood). I am now getting back on track with my art (which I hope one day will be my livelihood).

This month I am doing the Exploring Patterns (Chapter 6) exercises in Keys to Drawing with Imagination by Bert Dodson. This drawing is my solution to Exercise 34, Shape Mergers. The exercise is to take a news photo and draw it in black, white, and two shades of gray. Shapes with similar shades are merged, and the viewer's eye fills in the details.

I used a photo of a group of Fort Worth school children who are waiting for JFK's motorcade. You can see the photo here.

I read that Howard Pyle once advised N.C. Wyeth to not necessarily illustrate an event in a straightforward, obvious way. Rather, it is sometimes more effective to illustrate a story in a more oblique way. I think the crowd of school children is a good example of this. JFK's motorcade would be an obvious way to illustrate JKF's assassination, as would Lee Harvey Oswald in the Book Depository. But I think the bright-eyed schoolchildren, waiting for the motorcade, is much more poignant and tells the story of the impact of the assassination on the nation: unfulfilled expectations.

Two Friends

Two friends, aboard a small dinghy, adrift with no oars. Are they worried? No. They choose instead to enjoy the beautiful day and ocean breeze. This is an exercise from the book Keys to Drawing with Imagination. The exercise is to suggest a story by combining a drawing from imagination with a realistic drawing. I drew the creature on the right back in December; I conjured him up out of rumpled towels. The person's pose is based on my teen-age son; I sketched him in our pool in a boat over the weekend. (The head is not my son's head.)

Jawzahr

This sequence tells the story of Jawzahr, an ancient Persian dragon. Jawzahr chases the sun and moon around the stars and repeatedly swallows them, causing eclipses. This sequence shows Jawzahr chasing and swallowing the moon. Each scene is 3" x 3". Colored pencil on museum board.

Illustration Friday - Wrinkles

These two sequences were inspired by the prompt wrinkles.

The Making of a Werewolf

Another sequence.

Carried Away

I am working on sequences now. A sequence is a series of drawings linked by time or logic. A sequence tells a story.

Princess Drops a Gold Bar

Princess dropped a gold bar on her foot. Ouch! It's karma, Princess. You gotta give a gold bar or two away.

Princess Meditates

Princess meditates upon a bar of gold. Princess sometimes gets the nagging doubt that "gold" and "meditation" don't go together, but she just pushes those thoughts from her mind.

At the time of this writing, a bar of gold, which weighs around 28 pounds, is worth between $300,000 and $400,000 (USD). Since gold is very compact, a gold vault can store billions of dollars worth of gold. You can read more about gold here. If you are ever in the Wall Street area in Manhattan, I highly recommend the Gold Vault Tour at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

Princess Opens Her Gold Vault

Princess Walks the Dog

Princess strives to be the person her dog thinks she is.

Princess Practices Downward Facing Dog

I am working on another Keys to Drawing with Imagination exercise. The exercise is to draw an imaginary character in different poses and situations. After playing around with different potential characters, I finally settled on a princess.

Here is Princess practicing downward facing dog.

Framed Fairy

This is another exercise in Keys to Drawing with Imagination. The idea is to frame a central figure with background objects such as clouds, trees, or man-made structures. The goal is to direct the viewer's attention to the central figure. Here I have framed a fairy with some sort of imaginary foliage. The foliage is drawn from imagination, and the fairy from life. The fairy is a small statute ... I couldn't get a real fairy to pose for me.

Intensifying the Action

This is my solution to the following Keys to Drawing with Imagination exercise: Make a drawing of two silhouetted figures in extreme action (running, fighting, dancing, falling, etc.). Make sure that the silhouette of each figure is active, angular, and placed on a diagonal.

Associations

Here is a fun drawing exercise from Keys to Drawing with Imagination by Bert Dodson: Use an idea from one drawing to trigger an idea for a new drawing. Draw from imagination and keep the drawings simple, without backgrounds. For example, in the sequence below, I start with something with branches: A tree. That made me think of something with many legs: An octopus. That made me think of something with many feet: A centipede. That made me think of many shoes.

I can fill pages with these associations:

The Princess Farms

I arbitrarily chose two words, princess (a person, entity, or thing) and farm (a place or location), and then put them together into a drawing.

The Witch's Last Sight on Earth

The idea here is to show the witch's viewpoint just after Dorothy throws the water at her. I tried to make Dorothy a tad sinister. I struggled with the splashing water. Also, the water should obscure the lower part of her pigtails (once you make a mistake with pen, there is no going back).