Anthony Zierhut

I’ve been trying to get the time to do more watercolor. The pencil and the smudge tool are just so much more portable. Although every day I’ve been looking at a watercolor book I bought recently: Pasadena Sketchbook by Joseph Stoddard. I love his incredibly loose linework and washes. Very inspiring — and he’s a local artist painting locales very familiar to me. More of his work can be seen here.

A neighborhood raccoon about the size of a medium-sized dog comes to our front porch a couple times a week. Sometimes we put peanuts out for him/her (not sure, so we’ve named him/her “Pat” — in honor of the Julia Sweeney SNL skit, ha). He/she was moving quite a bit so I had to sketch a bit faster than usual to capture him/her.

Emma reading a magazine at the orthodontist’s…

Jack reading Calvin & Hobbes.

She’s waiting, filling out forms.

Now I’m waiting, this is what I see. Thank goodness for the sketch book.

Today we got a special invitation from some good friends to see the third Pirates Of The Caribbean movie at the El Capitan Theatre in Hollywood. It’s an ancient theater, renovated to better than it was in the 1920s, no doubt, which is now owned by Disney so they art direct the heck out of it for the movies they show. Many of the original props from the movie decorate the lobby and several original costumes of many of the characters are on display for viewing after the show in a museum area downstairs. Before the show began an organist on stage dressed as a pirate played several Disney movie scores, ending with the Pirates score. It’s a fabulous sounding organ that was all dressed up for the occasion too. I knew I had a limited time to sketch him after we were seated, because once he’s done the entire organ and organist mechanically drop down below the stage as the lights dim. I just finished the sketch when this happened, which amused my son quite a bit. We went with a large group of friends and their kids. It was a lot of fun.