Anthony Zierhut Storyboard Artist, Animatic Artist, Pre-vis Artist, Sketch Blog
Last Saturday I donated my 1995 Ford Escort to the Breast Cancer Research Foundation. We scheduled a pick up and just before the appointed time I figured I’d take the opportunity to sketch my old mechanical companion one last time. I did the line work rapidly, as I had only about ten minutes before the appointed time; but the driver was late, so I spent more time on the watercolor than usual. Fourteen years and 100,000 miles! It stranded me once or twice, but was a good car overall.
Here’s a good quote:
At this point, don’t aspire to be great, or even to be original. Aspire to be prolific. That’s an aspiration you can control, and one that can lead — in less time than you might think — to greatness and originality.
That’s from Freehand Drawing & Discovery Urban Sketching and Concept Drawing for Designers by James Richards. It’s a highly-recommendable book on location sketching and much more.
Just a quick one – it’s a trick drawing / painting while standing up. Behind them is a mirror and you can see me reflected in it drawing this 
I went to water our community garden plot over the weekend and captured some moments there.
I saw these carefully pruned trees in a commercial area of Pasadena the other day, and thought they were funny enough to sketch. After a while I kind of got upset, thinking, “Who does this to a tree?” My first thought was of someone so uncomfortable with Nature’s random beauty that they had to square it off. Then it occurred to me that these are probably not trees at all, in fact they’re more than likely shrubs that grew up to tree-size, and they were probably always squared off, so why stop? It’s actually very funny, intentionally or not. I’d like to think it’s intentional.
I got the old Ford washed over the weekend. I loaded my Noodlers Ahab fountain pen with Lexington Gray ink and did a little sketching.
It’s a little-known fact that in Southern California the hottest month of the year is in fact September. That’s more anecdotal than scientific, but I don’t care, I swear it’s true. It was nice to draw a bit and get my mind off the blistering heat.
I started to draw this man’s wife or girlfriend, but she got up and moved. Oh well…
UPDATE: I did a little color work on these just for fun:
We went to the Henry Miller Library to see Black Francis in concert there. It’s a great venue to see music. A couple years back we had seen John Doe and Peter Case there. Very small, intimate venue – folding chairs on the grass, probably a couple hundred people max. I was not familiar with Black Francis, but was informed by my wife and cousin Jerry that he was in the Pixies. It was a great show, and a nice experience only a couple miles from the campsite.
A lot of people came to visit us and stay with us at the campsite. It was great to see Uncle Jerry again. He’s folding up his tent in the lower left-hand corner.
Luckily I wasn’t selected for a jury this time. It was an interesting opportunity to sketch.
