Teeny Tiny Book

It has been a busy September.

So busy in fact, that I completely and entirely forgot to post this. Whoops. But on with the post...

I must confess that when I'm traveling I have a terrible habit of not drawing. I do use my sketchbook for the usual silly characters and story ideas, but somehow, I rarely break out my pencils to draw on location. Without fail, after each trip/vacation/visit, I lament the lack of a hand-drawn visual record of the time. I vowed that my recent trip to Seattle would be different, and I knew that spending the time with two other illustrators would be an ideal way to do some serious city drawing.

Jessixa, Brooke, and I certainly made time for drawing, but sometimes it's all about the materials and the format you're working in. While we were exploring downtown Seattle, I bought a teeny tiny accordion-bound sketchbook. It was perfect... not too precious and just right for rambling, exploratory drawing.

I used it to draw all over the city--exploring Pike Place Market, picnicking, drinking tea, drawing chez les Bagleys, watching roller derby, lunching, touring the underground tunnels of Seattle... the list goes on. The accordion format let me to play with each page individually but also allowed for a fluid transition between images. This teeny tiny book turned out to be the perfect souvenir.     

 I actually fell in love with the fluidity of the accordion format and have already started playing with a new one for a future project.

Grand Central Extended

For my drawing on location class, we had an extended project to pick a city block and do a series of nine drawings - three drawings in each of three locations on the block. I had originally chosen to draw uptown in my old neighborhood, but I had a really hard time in all of the locations and ended up despising all of the work that I did.

I had so much fun drawing at Grand Central a couple of weeks ago that I decided to go back and use it as my location. I divided up the station into three separate parts - the main terminal, the dining concourse, and the holiday market. While there, I did a bit of experimenting playing with different pens, but I'm pretty satisfied with the pieces I came out with.

Main Terminal

Dining Concourse

Holiday Market

Grand Central Drawings

On Friday, we went to the main terminal of Grand Central station for my on location drawing class. The in-process drawings were featured on GCT's facebook page! Woot!

conte crayon:

marker

Drawing Class

Hope everyone out there had a good Thanksgiving.

November has sped by in a haze of sneezing and coughing. I spent about half of the month sick and the remainder in front of the computer working on actionscript for the digital version of my thesis. More about that another day...

Today, however, I wanted to post a couple of images from my drawing class. Every Friday, I have five hours of drawing, either on location around the city or in the studio with live models. It's a great class, and it's been an opportunity for loads of experimentation.

Our on location days have included trips to Governor's Island, 50 stories up in a building overlooking the World Trade Center site, the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens, Gleason's Boxing Gym... it's been amazing. Here are some highlights:

My classmates looking down out over the city -

Drawing the Woolworth building -

Skyline (looking North) -

Word Trade Center site -

Drawing from the South side of the building -

After such a detailed drawing, I wanted to do something looser... quick ink drawing of my classmates and the interior of the space -

Unfinished drawing, Woolworth building -

Patrick Dougherty sculptures at the Brooklyn Botanical Garden (If you haven't seen them yet, check them out! They're amazing... he also did an installation at Smith during my first year.) -

Erin drawing

Left-handed drawing to warm up... my pen ran out of ink halfway through -

Drawings of the sculpture -

Detail page from the cactus room in the greenhouse -

Back in the studio with three models. Warming up with charcoal -

Playing around with ink (unfinished) -

Tighter pencil drawing -