Drawing Tallahassee

[drawingtallahassee]

Comedy Night

2020/04/05  Birds Aphrodisiac Oyster Shack, Free comedy night

Open-mic comedy, with sign-up, some regulars, some randos, generally less cringe-y than might be expected.  Each comic gets five minutes max, so good for the insta-sketch.

 In my defense, it was getting pretty late at that point.

Good reminder to vary poses and angles.

[drawingtallahassee]

Watercolor shards

2020/02/05  Birds

More masking tape and wash, this time in color.  Not sure where I’m going with these but like them so far.  All that white space!  And the occasional rips from pulling up the tape, ahhh, nice.  Next apply that to image.

[drawingtallahassee]

The Lab at Birds

2020/02/05  Birds Oyster Shack, The Lab

Much sketch at Birds.  The Lab Sessions, run by Jim Crozier, here lively and fresh, away for a while but back in action now with a fancy new pacemaker kinda thing -- ragged time being great for music but less so for hearts. 

Good music, lots of people up on stage, but only a couple shown here and only one at a time.  The usual fast ink-and-wash one-and-done, been playing with pencil under-drawing but it still feels very clumsy.

Bill Landing on Saxophone. 

And Ben Banks, usually on guitar but here setting up or taking down,one.

[drawingtallahassee]

Boards and Books

2020/01/18  Black Dog @ Lake Ella

A good day for it, students studying, chess players staring intently.

[drawingtallahassee]

Fences

2020/01/07-15,  Serenity Coffee, 926, Birds

Making ink and wash inside little masking tape enclosures.   I was thinking panels at first, but more irregular shapes are appealing. The tape is laid down first, well before the first line is contemplated -- often as not before I leave the house.  Then sketching, usually in left to right order, a certain randomness... the subject sometimes fits the frame, sometimes not.   I like the effect, the illusion of premeditation.

First, a jam session at Serenity, just happened to be there when it happened.

Next some photo ref at 926, waiting for the drag show to start.  Photos taken by me of Lake Ella Muscovy Ducks and faces from the old family photo, +100 years old, of Nana, my grandmother, and her poor suffering mother - 11 kids and a husband who made a run for it.

And finally Birds, from the Wednesday Lab Session, there were six on the page but two of them were real clinkers.  I like these, maybe enough to go back and touch them up, whiten up the highlights, especially on those tricky nose bridges.  Hunting for the line I always end up overdrawing it, tsk.  And in the line of faces on the last one, the faces should be forehead-lit all the way down, and emphasize the shadows on the back and under the jaw.

Gutters are too wide -- store-bought masking tapes comes in one-inch and up. Just got some half-inch in from Amazon, see how that goes.  And then, of course, the watercolor...

[drawingtallahassee]

Kava Faces

2019/08/05 Serenity Coffee and Kava

Forgive the paucity of posts. Having to wrestle the tumbler api every time I put up a new one and sometimes, you know, I lose.

[drawingtallahassee]

End Song

2019/07/31 Bird’s Aphrodisiac Oyster Shack. The Lab.

[drawingtallahassee]

Canopy Road Shadows

2019/07/29 Canopy Road Cafe. Just watercolor. Liking the option to revise initial lines, or just blast over them with darker color. Not so much an option with the pen line, especially in black.

ghj

[drawingtallahassee]

World-Wide Sketchcrawl 64

2019/07/27 Black Dog in Railroad Square

World-wide etc day again! And me at my table with my little hand-lettered sign "World-Wide Sketchcrawl 64 - Get Sketchy!" waiting for everyone else to get there.

Here this woman wonders who the hell I am and what's with the notebook already.

Back of the line portraiture, less socially awkward, less personally stressful.

Now the happy time, carbs and caffeine ordered, paid for, on the way!

Later, hands shaking from too much coffee, I adjourn to Bird's Aphrodisiac Oyster Shack for soothing tequilas and a different class of models. Still on the mission but undercover, sign safely tucked away. This is a bar, and I am not a brave man.

[drawingtallahassee]

2019/06/21, Serenity Coffee and Kava Bar.

My favorite place for coffee, also serving the k-youth drink-drugs kava, kratom and kombucha, but no khat, that still being illegal oh well.

Here we have a patron rendered in JavaVision, which is to say while the artist was all jacked up on the caffeine, not actually painted in coffee. It's a cool idea but in practice even a strong brew makes a weak paint and after a couple of days rotting on the page smells awful.

Next a brief psychotic episode brought on by too much coffee and Thomas Hart Benton.

[drawingtallahassee]

Drawing Tallahassee GO!

2019/05/30  Okay, moved back to town, a good time to start a new sketchbook blog.  The last one was strictly about mapping my slow progress in learning to draw, with examples of same, and occasional commentary.  This one should be more focused, moving with direction and purpose, enabling enlightenment, spreading joy throughout the community, maximalitizing creatitivitude and illuminating the path of truthful living so we can all live happily ever after until God’s Big Boot comes crashing down on our poor eggshell heads.  Like, CRYSTALS AND PUPPIES!  

It *should* be like that.  

But...  am I really up for that kind of sustained optimism?  No.  Ask anybody.  Just, no.  So this will be about mapping my slow progress in learning to draw, with examples of same, and occasional commentary.  But more architecture and foliage -- gotta work on the backgrounds.  More story stuff, more comics.  And an associated instagram page (I’ll make that next) for anything interesting enough to hook out of the steady stream of daily scribbles.

And  I do like puppies!  Just saying.  But here’s a cat.