wagonized

Oh la vache

I've always wanted to draw cows in plein air.  One day.  It's on my bucket list.  Right now I'll just practice from photographs.

Pilot pen in sketchbook.

 

iPhone + faculty meeting

Another little doodle on the iPhone during today's faculty meeting.  I made my colleague Andy look like a little boy from the back.  Brushes for iPhone.

 

Sainte Mère l'Église

Another moment spent with Megan, drawing in my classroom for a good portion of our prep time. Still trying to apply the precious teachings of Megan on the matter of perspective and test-drawing my brand new Pilot V Ball.  

The stache

I had not drawn a face with a pencil in a while -- and again Flickr provided me with a perfect subject.  A man whose name I don't know, just a great smile, a great nose, a great mustache, great hair (though you have noticed I carefully avoided drawing too much of that).  B & HB pencils on all-purpose Xerox paper.  

 

Grammar and composition

There wasn't much time for anything other than a bunch of doodles today.  I sat on one of our library's new bean bags (this could quickly become a habit) while Megan was sitting at a table -- and we doodled.  Her drawing of one of the bean bags turned out, well, great.  While I proceeded to deform her left hand.  

Pilot B2P pen in sketchbook.

Place St Martin, Montbéliard, France

My drawing buddy Megan, an art teacher at my school, taught me a valuable (if not life-altering) lesson about drawing in perspective yesterday.  With a piece of chalk on my black board, she broke down the idea of two-point perspective, which I had no grasp of whatsoever.  Suddenly, things made so much sense.  Today, we both sat down in front of a picture I had taken during my latest trip to France: a street alongside St Martin Lutheran church in my hometown of Montbéliard.  I drew from left to right, while Megan (who is left-handed) drew in the opposite direction.  We came up with radically different results -- which made us laugh all the way through.  Here is Megan's awesome, drool-inducing version.  B2P pen in sketchbook.

 

If life hands you fifteen minutes

... draw for fifteen minutes.  That's what my drawing buddy Megan and I did today.  We had fifteen minutes at the end of our teaching day, so we sat down and drew in my classroom.  I opted for her Andy Warhol tote while she undertook the whole chair it was sitting on.  

And if fifteen minutes is all the time we have to draw, we'll take it.  On a positive note, it stopped me from shadowing / cross-hatching the heck out of it, which is always a good thing.  

B2P Pilot pen on photocopy paper.  

HAPPY NEW YEAR to all, and may 2012 yield more opportunities to draw and contemplate the beauty around us!

Some more Legos

More Legos, more boxes to store them in.  Pigma Micron 05 in "Babylogue" moleskine.  

This mess I call my desk

Here's an unfortunate accumulation of papers and boxes, piled onto what was once a desk in my classroom -- and somewhere in there, there's a Dell desktop computer for students who are brave enough to deal with Windows XP.  "Bottle-to-Pen" in sketchbook.  

 

KCig

I don't know why I insist on using Brushes on the iPhone -- the surface is so small and the whole process is so tedious, erasing the app from my iPhone should be the reasonable thing to do.  This is an attempt at drawing one of my former students, the amazingly talented artist Kristen.  And this is as finished as it will get for now!

 

Paying my overdue fines at the Multnomah County library

I am going to consider my Christmas shopping to be done, and make myself more available to linger at the county library -- though not quite long enough to finish a drawing.  When I write "county library", it reminds me of this song by the Decemberists.  Probably my favorite by them.  B2P pen in sketchbook.  

 

 

Borrowing Nora's Crayolas

I had just got a gazillion little Crayola markers for my daughter, and I felt envious when I saw her try them all out one by one on a piece of paper.  The urge to doodle with a little Crayola marker came upon me, so once I put her down for the night, I tried the black one.  And the red one too, hehe.  

Chris & Eyad

A few minutes toward the end of our half-hour of reading today, Chris was having a tough time staying awake and Eyad kept reading.  

Check out Steve Reddy's blog for some really cool little scenes of his life in China.  A lot more stimulating than the stuff I've been doodling lately. 

 

Megan's pants

Pants.  Worn in the plural form in English and in the singular form in French.  My drawing buddy Megan and I didn't set aside much time to draw today so I came up a little short of a blog-worthy drawing.  But heck, I am posting it anyway.  Pigma Micron 05 in my new sketchbook.

 

Oh the aerodynamics

It was hard to take this little car from my daughter's hands tonight -- she played with it all day and wanted to take it in the bath with her.   This is the first time I have drawn a car whose model/make I have no clue about.  It's a character from the movie "Cars 2" -- it would help if I had seen it.  I personally get a kick out of those fender-mounted rear-view mirrors.  How irresistibly retro and probably not too aerodynamic -- but who cares, this little guy flew across the kitchen floor like a champ today.  

 

Thank you for smiling

It's not often that I get our daughter to smile for a photograph.  As soon as I pull out the SLR, she puts her serious face on.  It's amazing how much I see my own sister when she smiles.  B graphite in sketchbook.  

 

Robin's cart

My drawing buddy Megan and I cleared an hour from our respective schedules and sat in the library of our school today -- initially to overcome our fear of drawing large spaces.  But I ended up drawing what was in front of our table: Robin's cart.  Megan, feeling a little more adventurous, tackled the corner of the central counter.  These little sessions are a refreshing change of pace in my week.

Pigma Micron 08 on the back of some xeroxed handout. 

 

Faculty meeting

Our faculty meetings are not meetings per se -- they are lectures during which I have no excuse not to doodle a bit with this B2P (bottle to pen) pen that I keep in my purse.  

 

Holding it together

 I haven't drawn anything in days -- bronchitis, lack of energy, blah.  Next thing I know I am uninspired.  I could not even heed Michael Nobbs's positive exhortations.  But today our daughter Nora played with this old belt of mine and as it sat there after I put her to bed, I found it a bit symbolic.  The belt that holds it all together at long last.  Kind of the way I feel now after three weeks of antibiotics, cough, dizziness and approximate doodles with Crayola markers.  A little more together.  B2P pen in "babylogue" Moleskine. 

Not quite out of the woods yet

Sniffle sniffle cough cough -- it's been a week now.  But DayQuil is doing its job.  B2P pen and color pencil in sketchbook.

High School library

I sat in the library of my school today and tried to do something I am incapable of doing: draw a room with ceiling, floor and all.  People kept moving around, so I didn't capture anyone -- except Kim who was sitting on the left hand side.  But even she eventually got up and went back to class.  My buddy Megan was sitting next to me and she drew the same scene.  If she uploads it, I will put the link here. 

B2P ("bottle to pen") pen in sketchbook.  

Le chien de Géraldine

The best way to stop brewing over drawing (or, in my case, not drawing) is to actually draw, right?  But sometimes, the mere act of reaching for a sketchbook or a blank piece of paper can be daunting -- and it usually results in no drawing at all.  Tonight as I was finishing grading some quizzes, I decided to grab one whose back had not been doodled on (as I often urge my students to flip their papers at the end of a quiz and kill a couple of minutes by doodling while everybody finishes), and I used that as my support.  Tomorrow when I give my Freshmen students their quizzes back, Géraldine will have a puppy in the back of hers.  2B mechanical pencil on photocopy paper.  

 

Sitting next to buddy

Sitting next to my buddy Megan -- gosh I have missed our little doodling sessions -- today during our faculty meeting.  Megan makes some mighty good architecture drawings in her Moleskine.  

Here's an older drawing of Megan's feet -- back when we were pregnant together.  

 

Bread and cream cheese

I had not drawn anything with a pen in what seemed like weeks.  When I opened my sketchbook (the Canson one, that I keep in my purse), I noticed the last drawing dated back to last July.   I recently took some "bread and cream cheese" shots of Nora -- but I get particularly tickled by the ones where we see her little hands.  So there it is, a little portrait of Nora eating bread and cream cheese with my Pigma Micron 05.  

Here's a large view.

Putting down the phone

I am still on my iPhone Brushes app kick.  I am not sure why I would want to punish myself by drawing on such a small surface.  Plus, the drawings become nothing more than "oh so this was drawn on a phone" kind of feat, you know?  Here is the latest -- how it started and how I am deciding to leave it.  Or vice versa.  The original photograph was something I had run into on Flickr and now I have no idea where it came from.   Shame on me!  

Here's my first humble attempt at using Brushes.  I didn't touch it for a couple of years (years!) after that.  Until now.