Sketching NOW Submissions

As part of Liz Steel's SketchingNOW on-line course, I did these two pieces.  The first is a meta-sketch (a sketch about sketching); the red item in the middle is my "chop", a Chinese signature/logo 'thingy'.  The result is in the lower, left corner.  It has the Chinese symbol for watercolor and my name.

This is an exercise is setting dimensions, and one I'm very familiar with.

Marigny House, New Orleans

Marigny is the NOLA district just east of the French Quarter . . . kind of like the Quarter was 35 years ago.  It's full of old houses, bars and local cafes.  I liked all of the shuttered windows, poles and wires and gritty feel of this place.

Merry Christmas

My dog, Tucker, and I send you wishes for a Merry Christmas!

New Palette

Son Steve gave me mini-palette that I used last Saturday.  Some asked about it.  It measures about 2.25" x 3.5" (it's made from a steel business card case).  Travel light and stay loose!

USk - Texas (Urban Sketching) November Sketchcrawl

Last Saturday about 15 hardy souls met at Bishop Arts for a cold sketch crawl.  Great fun!  Here is my "outside" sketch.

Then I went in Eno's and enjoyed a dark ale, waiting for our group to gather.  Couldn't help sketching my ale and the perfunctory glass of (untouched) ice water.

More Trees

I got into trees in my last post with "Painting a Tree."  So here a couple of more trees.  What's next: Money Tree?

Sketchbook Skool 3 Storytelling, Klass 3

Mattias Adolfsson asked us to get more fantasy-like.  Here is an early memory, from the 1st grade.

Then he asked us to be even more imaginative, and I did a meta-painting, or a painting about painting.  Great fun, and I plan more.

Sketchbook Skool 3, Story-telling Klass 2

We are doing a session with Melanie Reim on sketchbook reportage.  Here's my sketch on a big repair project that's being completed this afternoon on our street.  The street should be reopened in the morning . . . just as scheduled!

USk, Texas in Fort Worth

Saturday about a dozen of us braved the cool breeze and sketched at Sundance Square.  Here's my take on the Haltom building on the square's corner.  Great time.

Sketchbook Skool 3 . . . Storytelling

I just finished the assignments for the first class in Sketchbook Skool 3 . . . Storytelling.  Koosje asked us to do an illustrated recipe and an instruction manual.  Great fun doing these.
Here's the recipe . . . one we enjoyed in Angel Fire this summer.

Here's the illustrated Instruction Manual for everyone's favorite gadget.

Cliches

Don't you hate (and over-use) cliches?  Me, too.  To try out my new Lamy pen and practice some sketchbook lettering, I did this page.

Corsicana, Texas

This past weekend, Southwestern Watercolor Society (SWS) had a paint-out at Corsicana, some 70 miles south of Dallas.  About 40 of us had a great time there.  Here are a couple of sketches I did (in addition to two watercolors).

UTD mall

We live just a few hundred feet from the University of Texas at Dallas or UTD.  (It's actually in Richardson, but go figure.)  Here are a couple of recent sketches of a growing UTD.

Cap for Sketching

To top off Saturday's Sketch Crawl (a little sketchy humor), here's my painting cap, complete with my Texas Urban Sketching pin.

USk/DFW at the Truck Yard . . . Sept 2014

Yesterday, about 25 Texas Urban Sketchers from the DFW area gathered to sketch and sip with a couple of hundred young folks in the (food) Truck Yard in Dallas.  We thoroughly enjoyed our first fall-like day.

Santa Fe Camera Shop

Santa Fe is one of my favorite towns.  It's an old town . . . with an old camera shop.

Angel Fire Hike

Last week we were in Angel Fire, New Mexico.  SuAnne and Steve went for a hike (while I sketched from the car); they got caught in a heavy hail storm . . . I watched them run to the car.

Herb's Art Haiku

I like to play around with Haiku, a Japanese poetry form of 17 syllables in three lines.  The first has five syllables, the second has seven and the third line has five syllables.

Selfies from Sketchbook Skool

Here are more of my "selfies."  First is done from life, in a mirror.

Next is done from an iPad photo.

Next is a contour sketch, where my pen is not lifted from the paper.

Finally, here is a composite of the above.

Sketchbook Skool Selfie

Sketchbook Skool is unrelenting!  This week we are doing self-portraits.  Here's my second one, done in pencil.  I am supposed to several more before Friday.  Yikes!

Fast and Slow

This is the second assignment in Sketchbook Skool's 1st Klass on "Seeing."  It's a fast and slow technique: I did a one-minute wash to establish shape and design, then finished with a detailed pen-and-ink drawing to give details.

Now on to week two: "Seeing Yourself."

Toast

I just started Danny Gregory's Sketchbook Skool . . . a gift from son Steve.  Our first assignment was to draw bread ???  Here's my shot at it.  Great fun . . . more later.

Some Urban Sketching

Most recently, I've been caught up in the Urban Sketching movement, taking off around the globe.  It requires drawing on the spot . . . not from photos . . . and done more spontaneously and faster.  I'm using a smaller sketchbook, sketching fountain pen and smaller paint kit.  Here are my first volleys in the USk mode.

Sketches in and near Dallas ~2013

Last year Don Getz toured the country, leading some 60 three-day workshops on watercolor journaling.  I hosted the Dallas workshop.  Below are some of the sketches done there and shortly thereafter.

Early Sketches in/near Texas

About six or seven years ago, I took a watercolor sketching workshop with Eric Michaels in Waxahachie, Texas.  Here are a couple of sketches from that weekend, and shortly thereafter.