This blast from the past rode by on his chopped motorcycle early this afternoon. He went by so fast that I had to close my eyes and hold it like a still photo before attempting to draw it. What you don’t see is the grey beard and the grey/blond long hair coming out the back of the WWII German helmet. I think the bike had longer forks than I’m showing here, thinking back on it. It was like something straight out of Big Daddy Ed Roth’s world.
Some semi-random sketches from the last couple weeks. Waiting to be served, waiting for take-out, waiting for the bill, etc.
This man had a great profile. So when he moved I went in for another one:
Some tough-guys.
The tea…
The cook…
This woman had a very sweet face and seemed absolutely riveted by whatever the man she was with was saying.
On weekends it’s positively strange to be in a place normally so busy – people in production, going here and there – and now so vacant. I drew this sketch while eating my take-out ramen, sitting on the pavement in front of my office. Nobody around.
It was a beautiful day to sit outside and enjoy my lunch, so I made this little sketch during my lunch hour.
The night before last we all got into the minivan and went to LAX to pick up Joan’s cousin, who’d just spent the last four and a half months in Paris. We overestimated the downtown LA traffic and found ourselves in the International Flights waiting area an hour and a half early. Jack and I started sketching. Jack likes to sketch from memory characters from the latest Playstation game he’s working on, while I sketch stuff around me. He draws lots of long-haired mysterious looking guys with swords and strange beasts and monsters. I asked him to sketch something he saw here, which he did, and well; but that’s all rather boring to a 12-year-old. I know I would have been bored with reality at that age too. He asked me why I like to draw things, everyday things, that I see, and I told him honestly I don’t know. For some strange reason, the older I get the more interesting it is to draw normal reality as it unfolds. I can’t say why.
This young lady next to us hardly moved – except her thumb, which was doing a mile-a-minute, text-messaging on her cell phone. Her face was without expression, but her hand was quite expressive.
I’m on a new-ish schedule at work, in which Tuesday and Wednesday are my Saturday and Sunday. So yesterday I spent a few hours at the LA County Museum of Art. It’s the first time in about a year or so that I’d been there. There’s currently a great, albeit small, exhibit of Gustav Klimt’s original paintings, which were more inspiring than I was expecting, for some reason. The landscapes were my favorites – he had a very technically free and yet compositionally controlled painting style, with less regard for light and perspective than for surface and pattern; and yet he pulls it off without seeming mannered, or self-conscious or overly clever. All the paintings had a great sense of honesty to them. I guess I’d never really seen a Klimt up close, and I suppose I had been selling him short. This exhibit really was a pleasant surprise.
The Japanese Pavilion is a strange building – and my usual favorite part of the museum. I sketched it above. Inside all the art is lighted by natural light diffused through shoji screen like windows. You follow a gradual, serpentine path down through the building, criss-crossing an indoor stream that follows a similar path. It’s great. Very relaxing.
Visiting us with her family before moving to another state.
My dad (who knows these things) says it’s more than 100 years old. Joan bought it from a friend in Hollywood a few years ago. Notice the large portrait on the top right. That’s the home now of the ancestor photo I blogged about a while back. I’m still reading Danny Gregory’s amazing book, which prompted me to draw this piece of furniture that I’ve become so accustomed to that I don’t even see it anymore. Mr. Gregory is a positively evangelistic about drawing, and has a barely containable enthusiasm that is infectious. I’m finding myself looking around at things all over the house as potential subjects for sketching.
Anthony Zierhut 