Pencil

Holiday Boutique ’06

Joan organized a Holiday Boutique at the kids’ elementary school and the big event was this afternoon. Lily helped out at the button booth, making those buttons that you can pin on your shirt. Here she is working the machine. The kids in the foreground are a couple red-head boys drawing their designs to be pressed into a button. No, I didn’t make a mistake, she has actually dyed her hair green!

This is the button she made for me. I think it’s me and Joan in front of a Christmas tree. The faces are stickers she had.

The event. Joan is the woman in the middle of the picture, and yes, that’s Lily in the foreground.

December 2, 2006 0

Resaurant sketch

The food came before I could draw the man she was talking to.

December 1, 2006 0

Jane and Lily on the piano

They learned the first two bars of a Beethoven piano concerto and played it over and over and over and OVER AND OVER again…. Ha. The great part was they were having a good time and were sitting in one place long enough to sketch. At one point, when I was sketching her hand, Lily made her doll play it. Another sketch done standing up.

November 24, 2006 0

Bad sketch of Joan

It looks almost nothing like her, but I figure I don’t have enough color on this blog and I should post stuff even if it humbles me into sketching more and improving.

November 24, 2006 0

Lily in the park

This is when she wanted to go home to get a pair of pants so she could do “upside-down things”.

November 20, 2006 0

Back of the menu sketches

I have been working a lot lately, and not drawing for fun as much as I probably should, oh well –for a guy who’s basically freelance, it’s good to be working! So night before last we all went out to the local Mexican restaurant and the girls wrote their names on the backs of their kid’s menus, then came over to my side of the table and asked me to draw them under their names.

I like how Jane had to give me a credit on the bottom of her drawing. It’s funny, too, how she had to use my full name, as opposed to “Dad”. Kids are funny. You can almost make out what’s written on the other side of the paper too. Hopefully I’ll have some time to do some proper sketching here soon.

November 15, 2006 0

Father and son haircut

Today Jack and I went to our local barbershop. The only problem is that this is an old fashioned place, and my barber is well into his 80s, and Jack was not prepared for the amount of hair the kind gentleman would remove (despite my asking for a “trim”, etc). I like getting all that stuff out of my eyes, but to a 12-year-old it’s an entirely different deal. Oh well. Live and learn.

I have been inspired by Laura of Laurelines to do more color sketching, so I bought one of those little 3″ x 4″ moleskine cold-press watercolor sketchbooks. For years I’ve avoided cold-press paper, not liking the “bumpy” texture; but I think my drawing style is evolving to a place less controlled and more into accidents. I like cold-press now.

November 5, 2006 0

Happy Halloween

Jack’s Halloween costume (his drawing, my notes about color; click to enlarge):

I’ve spent a couple late nights putting Jack’s costume together. We do this every year: he draws it and I make it out of polyurethane foam. Last year he was General Grievous, this year it’s a design he came up with based on a dream, “Halloween Man”. I’ll post photos later. I love this time of year.