My son had a music recital recently at his middle school, along with the rest of the students in his music class. It took a little while for things to start so I sketched, naturally. The top two are men in front of us — each had a radically different profile. I liked the swirly hair of the kid sitting right in front of me, and the girl is Lily sitting next to me. She said, “Draw me like this,” and she made a semi-sad, bored face and held the pose. I think she was protesting the pre-recital wait. As with everything she does it was brimming with humor, despite the attempted pathos.
Just a quick sketch. I took Lily to work today. A friend instant-messaged her, so the two nine-year-olds had a very slow, funny conversation on-line. This is Lily waiting for the response from her friend. She didn’t hold still for too much of this and was quickly off doing something else, leaving me only about a minute and a half to sketch her.
Jack came to work this Saturday. We ate in the same Thai restaurant that I took Jane last weekend. In fact we were sitting at the very same table, right next to the salt water fish tank (a popular table with the kids). We talked about futuristic vehicles, so he drew this police anti-gravity motorcycle while I drew him drawing. I filled out the environment a little more than in the Jane sketch, since we were taking a little more time.
Jack was explaining to me how the anti-gravity engine works on this thing. Very cool!
Joan was waiting to speak to our son’s teacher. I showed her the sketch later and she laughed, it’s very “her” the way she stands. I started to draw the background but the teacher became available so I had to stop.
Since I’ve been working Saturdays for the last month or so, every weekend it’s bring your kid to work day! This time it was Janie’s turn. She looks like she was holding perfectly still, but not so: I started drawing her in one position, but she kept moving, eating, talking, so I had to interpolate the motion information to the pose. Kind of hard to do, in a fun way. She drew me too while I drew her.
I got my daughters lunch at the local deli while I got a haircut across the street. This was my view of them from standing behind the glass door waiting my turn, and later from the barber chair. They were having such a grand time and they never left my sight (Mike the barber turned the chair so I could see them). Yet another sketch done standing up. I’m getting used to it now, I suppose.
Today I got the day off, so I sat at the dining room table and had an uncharacteristically calm breakfast with Lily. Jane was still sleeping and Jack had to go to school. She was telling me about the music video she was “directing” in her imagination with her dolls. A sordid love triangle as far as I can gather. The slow pace of the morning slowed my hand down and it shows (to me at least) in the sketch.
Today, my day off, blasted by. The kids had lots of fun playing practical jokes on each other for April Fool’s Day.
My good friend Dave Lowery just this week got his new blog up and going — he’s already got some beautiful sketches up there. That prompted me to update the links on my site, changing or deleting the dead links, etc., which led to me once again enjoying the great drawing related links on Josh Sheppard’s wonderful links page. There I found this blog entry concerning the legendary illustrator Noel Sickles. Scroll down and behold the mind-blowing simplicity and genius of those Civil War sketches of his. Looks like pencil and wash. Just humbling to see that kind of ability, in my opinion. Then, going back to Josh’s page, I found this fantastic collection of self-published artist sketchbooks that can be purchased at Stuart Ng’s bookstore in Torrance, CA. There you go: inspiration — at least for me.
Anthony Zierhut 