The kids jump, and call, and send koo wees up to the koo wee sky! When I draw happy characters like this I find myself smiling and I don't even realize it. I hope that happiness comes through in the art. - From "Graham's Up the Tree"
So Mum goes for the phone and these guys slip out the door to see what Graham is doing up in the tree... I can't believe they'd just leave their food behind like that. I mean... look at it. Mmm.
These were drawn on different days, in different places.
A salt shaker and sugar rack at Beans & Barley on Milwaukee’s East Side—a place that is gone now. A chair at Starbucks, which is still there.
When I go places, I wait.
Waiting is filled with observation.
Observation is recorded with marks.
Marks spark memory.
I can look at a few pencil lines years later and remember where I was.
Maybe that’s what a sketchbook really keeps. Not drawings of things, but evidence of moments.
For Doodle Addicts, I would use this rather than making Beans & Barley the whole story. The loss of Beans & Barley gives one sketch poignancy, but your larger idea is better: drawing converts otherwise disposable waiting into memory.
Two pens resting on the table, drawn quickly before they were put back to work. The lines wander and double back, but that is part of looking: an ordinary object becomes particular when we give it our full attention.
Ink sketch from observation.
Ruskin believed that ornament was never decoration for its own sake — it was evidence of attention, a record of the hand and eye slowing down enough to truly see. These kaleidoscope name designs are built the same way: a name broken into line, repeated outward with discipline, until pattern becomes a kind of patience made visible.mandala, kaleidoscope, radial symmetry, pattern art, geometric art, name art, marker art, hand drawn, meditative art
Tried drawing a mermaid yesterday because why not, as I always say… unfortunately my first few attempts looked like someone punished a toilet, so I nixed that idea until now. Third (I think) time lucky?
A fun collage of all the things that were on my mind at the time of drawing. Made this as a banner for my website and Soundcloud and Spotify and stuff.
It’s the stoner’s holiday today (4/20) so while I don’t partake in that kind of thing personally, am I going to make use of a pun for a drawing title regardless? Yes, yes I am… xD
New sketchbook time already? Seems like it!
Kicking off the new volume “Digital Analog Native” with some Tails fan art, because that’s how we do it :-)
Jury Duty, June 2013
Fifty of us sat in that room, each one staring at a phone or scribbling in a notebook, killing time. The lawyers asked their questions, picking us off one by one like a slow game of dodgeball. I wasn’t chosen, so I drew instead—earbuds, slouched shoulders, the hum of waiting caught in a few quick lines.
Super Nationals at the Gaylord—two rivers running through the lobby, actual boats gliding under glass ceilings, a nature center tucked between restaurants. Noise everywhere: kids, clocks, pawns and queens. Yet here, in the middle of it, a pause. A man leans back with the weight of waiting. A woman sits, at ease but still seeking. An empty chair remembers everyone who has rested there. In a place built to dazzle, what lingered with me was not the spectacle, but the silence. To draw is to honor the quiet within the clamor.
thinking and seeing for better being — https://forming20.com/
Sometimes the quickest drawings hold the deepest truths. During an after-sermon discussion about understanding the love of God, I found myself listening with one ear and drawing with the other. Frank, seated across the room, made a natural model—relaxed posture, thoughtful presence, and a face full of character.
With a pen in hand, I traced his form in a quick contour line, following the folds of his shirt, the tilt of his jaw, the stillness of his hands resting in his lap. Contour drawing asks us to see more than just the surface—it demands patience and presence, a slowing down until the line itself feels like prayer.
Frank became more than a subject; he was a reminder that the love of God is often revealed in ordinary moments and everyday people.
Imperfect Lines, Honest Presence
This sketch is not perfect—and that’s exactly why it’s alive. The bold figure, the dissolving hat, the tilted chair: all of it feels unfinished, fleeting, caught in motion. It’s what the Japanese call wabi-sabi—finding beauty in the imperfect, the impermanent, the incomplete.
But there’s something deeper here too. A quick sketch is not just what the eye records. It’s what the soul permits. To draw without fixing, without polishing, is to admit the world will not hold still for us. Life slips past. The lines break off. And yet, somehow, the essence remains.
When you sketch this way, you are not the master of the moment—you are its guest. The pencil does not carve permanence; it pays attention. The act of drawing becomes an act of being present, of honoring what is already vanishing.
So here’s a challenge: grab a pencil and sketch someone near you in sixty seconds. Do not erase. Do not perfect. Let the lines falter. When you finish, ask yourself: What truth did the imperfection reveal?
Perhaps presence itself is the real art.
Overheard the title on the radio this weekend describing Radiohead songs of the In Rainbows era (you probably know the one)… And that ends my current sketchbook!
