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.
Narwhal flavours, washi tape as always and a cheeky Cymera sticker to start my current sketchbook… this one entitled “All Fishes Are Weird”.
One way to kill time during delays getting back home on the train back from London yesterday!
4 year old Henry engaged fully with thick applications of watercolor and oil pastels. He said it was a stormy sea with a small boat. This was at the onset of the pandemic, when we were all a bit uncertain and confined to our homes. I was reminded of an insight by Kierkegaard written in the early 1800s: “When the sailor is out on the sea and everything is changing around him, as the waves are continually being born and dying, he does not stare into the depths of these, since they vary. He looks up at the stars. And why? Because they are faithful – as they stand now, they stood for the patriarchs, and will stand for coming generations. By what means then does he conquer changing conditions? Through the eternal: By means of the eternal, one can conquer the future, because the eternal is the foundation of the future.”
Watercolour painting of a Prickly Hakea. I started drawing different plants last month from the area where I live. This month I am turning them into watercolours, with the Hakea being one of the first.
Many years back, I watched that documentary ‘The Boy Whose Skin Fell Off’ about a fellow called Jonny Kennedy who lived with the skin condition EB. There’s a bit in that film where he talks about what he hopes his afterlife would be like and, for whatever reason, a couple of coffees as I was re-reading the Wikipedia article about it triggered an idea I had to scribble down...
I started a new youtube series called Paint With Frenemy. Channeling Bob Ross in short painting videos. Check it out if you like and please like an subscribe! I'lll be posting new videos every Sunday 9am eastern time. This week video I paint a happy little taco with some stop motion animation mixed into the painting process. Link here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Hfj3xBju_c
I'm considering starting a little comic with this little guy. Prepare to never see it exist. Also, backgrounds are hard and I didn't do all that much but it looks good!
A child stands on the boardwalk holding a helium balloon, depicting Donald Trump’s turkey neck tied to a string. The child stares up, contemplating the ugly balloon.
Then everything started shrinking. Every piece of furniture became elongated and narrow and disappeared towards the ceiling. There was something crawling under the rag rugs in the hall. It was also narrow and thin and wriggled in the middle, sometimes very quickly and sometimes very slowly.
- Sculptor's Daughter by Tove Jansson
#dailydrawing #tovejansson
I stared and stared at her until I had stared her into little pieces and I thought, you're big and scraggy like a carthorse and nobody can hunt for you in the grass and you couldn't hide anywhere because you can be seen the whole time and you can't surprise anybody and make them feel good! You have completely spoilt our games for no reason because you can't play games yourself! O alas and alack! No one wants your presents. He doesn't want them! You're nobody's surprise, and you can't understand because you're not an artist! And so I went a little closer and humiliated her by saying the most terrible thing of all : amateur! You're an amateur! You're not a real artist!
- Sculptor's Daughter by Tove Jansson
#dailydrawing #tovejansson
