Just for Fun

Once in a while, just for fun and a challenge I draw things I don't normally tackle. Last week a news photo of the Iowa governor's residence, Terrace Hill, struck me as interesting. Terrace Hill is more than 150 years old, built by an early Iowa land baron and eventually sold to a prominent family who in turn donated it to the state. It's a big Victorian house with all of the requisite gingerbread that came with this style.

This particular drawing was made on a Wacom display tablet using a program called Sketchbook. Like most digital drawing and painting programs Sketchbook allows the artist to pick tools using varioius parameters like size, darkness, soft/hard emulations and so on. For this one I used no perspective tools or other digital crutches and instead just drew it "free hand."

"Terrace Hill," digital

Portraits

For some years one of my primary genres in painting was portraits. Most of the works from those days were head and shoulders views though I did a few half-length works too. In the supposed hierarchy of painting genres, portraits are one rung from the top, after history painting, although the latter has fallen far out of favor. For that matter, so have personal portraits. The reasons are complicated but in part photography has clearly supplanted much. And for that matter, we're a less formal people than our ancestors seem to have been. 

Regardless, portraits remain a challenging and engaging task. Achieving a serviceable likeness is sometimes the best an artist can hope for, but the very best manage to convey expressions, moods, and even subtle cues of character. It's said, for example, that when Velazquez' portrait of him was shown to Pope Innocent X he cried, "Take it away! It's too real!" Presumably he felt the painter had seen something of his true and rather vicious character. 

Diego Velazquez, "Pope Innocent X," 1640

I don't claim equality with any of the masters, but you can judge these few portraits of mine for yourself.

"Linda," oil on canvas, 2007, private collection

"Brad," oil on canvas, 2009

"David," oil on canvas, 2007, private collection

"Bill," oil on canvas, 2010, collection of the painter

Painted Plein Air

A little over four years back I participated in a workshop with my friend Garin Baker in upstate New York. Garin's studio is in New Windsor, about 60 miles north of New York City. The Hudson is a wide, estuarial body, which means it has tides that extend as far as Newburgh, where we painted, that reverse its flow. That is, the water flows either north or south depending on the ocean.

"5-19-19 (The Hudson)," oil on panel, 9x12

This view of the river faces southeast, with a mountain called Storm King along the right side of the painting. The day was windy with low scudding clouds, and the river washed onto the shore in small waves kicked up by the weather. We painted at this location almost all day. 

When a fellow painter saw this one online she commented on the flock of birds in the sky, but the truth was those "birds" are gnats, caught in the wet oil paint as I went along. When that happens it's a simple matter to wait for the paint to dry before brushing off the intruders. I took this photo before I cleaned the surface. My initials are scratched into the painted surface, one of the indications that the work was completed outdoors.

Retirees

"Three Retirees," ink and wc

Although I'm an oil painter I love doing watercolors too. This is a sketch of three vintage autos--two pickups and a van--that I saw at an antique car dealership here in Des Moines. Older trucks are more rounded and graceful than contemporary ones.

Rocky Stream

"Rocky Stream," oil on panel

Here is one of my newest landscapes, a group of rocks in a river. If you've paid much attention here in the past few months you know that this is a subject that has fascinated me for a long while--hard and variously shaped stone versus elusive, transparent and slithery water. "Rocky Stream" is 11x14 and will be available soon on my website.

 

Ravine

"Ravine at Ashby Park," watercolor

The great thing about being part of a sketch group is regularity. Our group has a pact to go outdoors and sketch, weather notwithstanding. That means rain, snow, wind or otherwise, someone (or several or many) go outside. We may not get great images but nevertheless we go. 

This little watercolor is from a while back. There are quite a few parks in Des Moines, and this one hasn't been visited by our group. It's a mixed place--playground, picnic tables, and the like plus a relatively unimproved area that features a deep and steep-walled ravine that needs stairs.

At the Ballpark

Last week the Saturday group went to the local baseball stadium, now known as Principal Park. Old timers like me prefer the old name, Sec Taylor Stadium because it honored a long-time sports writer for the local newspaper. Regardless of what it's called, there was no game that day so the parking lot was empty. I sat in the shade and sketched the main entrance and landscaping.
 

Old Drawings

If you've been drawing long enough some of your sketchbooks get misplaced. Not lost, exactly, just not in the same place as the other sketchbooks in the studio. That's what happened to a sketchbook that had somehow been left behind in a backpack. The works in the sketchbook are nearly all graphite, many with chalk highlighting. 

The main surprise for me, besides having forgotten several of the drawings, was how varied the subjects were. That is, there were still life, faces, animals and other subjects. Here are a few, all done on tan paper. 

This one is from a reference photo of mine. This fellow visited the woods behind my studio one early winter day. 

This rose was one of the very last in my garden that year. for some reason it hung on until the last moment. This is from a reference shot.

Many folks have a hard time rendering shiny metal and I'm no exception. This is a study of a tarnished silver cup. The shine and the range of values in the metal reflections were the main interest.

I often draw figures to keep my eyes sharp and careful. This is a study of a truly monumental marble statue of Venus. When the figure is posed with hands over the pubic region these are termd "Venus pudica:. That is, "modest Venus".
 

Sketching Trees

To be a convincing landscape artist you have to understand the anatomy of trees. Trees come in a wide range of sizes, shapes, and configurations. For example, a mature blue spruce can be 50 feet tall with a conical shape and blue-green to green color. On the other hand, a mature oak may be nearly as tall with a heavy, thick trunk and a balloon-like mass of dark foliage above it. A beginner might confuse them when drawing, but a trained artist knows better. Drawing and painting believable trees is a critical skill. 

 During the last month I've posted a watercolor sketch of a mature blue spruce, a silverpoint drawing of an ancient bristlecone pine, and a plein air oil that included a big deciduous tree, probably a cottonwood. 

Here's a small watercolor sketch of tree trunks in a shady garden. 

"Shade in the BHG Demonstration Garden," wc/ink, 3.5x7