They were at the doctors to get some blood drawn. The contrast between their personalities: The older one is very calm and trying to console the younger one, who is nervous and a little bit scared. They both brought friends – a teddy bear (“Samantha”) and a plush-toy monkey (“Lucy”).
I’m not sure why this is the third post recently of someone standing in front of an audience with a microphone. Coincidence, I suppose.
Anyway, this was at a PTA meeting I attended with my daughter this evening. The guest speaker was Alex Kajitani, aka the “Rappin’ Mathematician”. He was very inspiring, talking about reaching middle school kids using rap to teach algebra. Here’s a YouTube video from a CBS newscast that explains it pretty well. He was showing us his student – produced music videos about parallel lines and negative and positive numbers. I got the room pretty well, and his physical attitude, but I was not so good with his likeness. So, when he sat down after the presentation, I got to remedy that:
These were both line drawings done in my sketch book at the event, then brought home, scanned and value added in Photoshop.
These were some quick line drawings that I did during the meeting last night and then added value in Photoshop.
It was an important meeting. Letting us know about layoffs of teachers and options they were considering. Pretty depressing, actually.
I did this while waiting for the take-out to come. As soon as I laid the last wash, the man handed me the bags and off I went. Perfect timing. There’s always the fear lurking that I won’t have time to finish a sketch, with the subject walking off or something or other.
I’ll be bringing her to “Take your child to work” day tomorrow. Should be fun!
As I was walking to work this morning through our urban/suburban neighborhood I heard a rustling to my right. I turned to see something astonishing: a bird flying away with another bird gripped below it. It looked almost like a big ball of flapping feathers. The next second I realized it was a young, fairly small red tailed hawk lifting a pigeon across the street and up to a nearby tree. Both birds were about the same size, with the hawk having something like a two-foot wing span, about half the size of most adult red tailed hawks in this part of the world. The hawk landed in the tree limbs up about 15 feet above me and started to tear the pigeon apart, eating it. I pulled out my sketchbook and started to draw what I saw. The sketch below it was from memory as it flew past my shoulder on its way to the tree. I was treated to my own personal National Geographic special in the middle of the city.
There was a fundraiser tonight at the local elementary school where my wife teaches art. This is from about an hour ago. Jack took a break to draw something, then I drew him. He got up eventually, leaving me to draw the studio classroom behind him. I may throw some watercolor on this at a later date…
