You know it’s October when the crows come into town. They circle our neighborhood like a motorcycle gang, chasing hawks and intimidating squirrels. They hang out on the telephone lines and the branches of trees with falling leaves. Great fun.
So, new season, new sketchbook, new attitude about sketching. The color, and the pencil and the fixatif was all getting a little much for me. The portability of the clutch pencil and smudge stick were replaced by something a bit more laborius and fussy, so I was finding that sketching was becoming an ordeal, and as a result I was doing less of it. Just for fun, I made a couple of little ink-and-wash sketches at the end of my last book:
I enjoyed doing it and sort of liked how they turned out — just using a typical ball point pen and a light wash of sepia watercolor. I’ve since done a few more like this in the new book. The materials are easier to carry around: the waterbrush and a small tin with a dab of sepia color in it. I also got tired of all the half-finished sketches in the last book, so I’ve decided to finish every sketch I start, even if the subject has walked away, forcing me to finish from memory. A book full of finished little sketches would be a nice change of pace for me.
The book I’ve been using for the current and previous sketch book is called a “Hand Book“. It’s about the same size as a moleskine, but the paper is much better
for watercolor washes. (The drawing at the top of the post was done in a moleskine with the thick paper — it took to ink like a dream but note the blotchy washes that actually bled through !! to the other side. I’ve never experienced paper doing that before with watercolor. I went out and bought another Hand Book after that.)
It’s late in the year for a new-year’s resolution, but this new approach kind of feels like that…
I’ve always courted obsession. The trick, I think, is finding a way to make your obsessions pay the mortgage, hopefully. Anyway, the older gentleman in center frame was wearing a charcoal-gray suit and bright red socks. It’s impossible not to love that. I found my blue ball point and the back of the church bulletin. Sitting on the other side of my wife was my son, also drawing. She rolled her eyes and shook her head. Obsession passed on to another generation.
Anthony Zierhut 