Dickens Faire

I went to the Dickens Faire in San Francisco the other day do some costume sketches.  A lot of fun, as people really go all out with their costumes, and stay in character!  There are definitely a good sized steam punk contingent there, but mostly it seems people try and stay realistic to the time period.  Originally I had planned to hit a model salon but by the time I got there (kind of late), it was finishing up, so I was relegated to trying to sketch moving targets of opportunity, relying often on memory.

Here are some more successful ones:

Bartender

Cad

Standing room only at the Adventurer's Club Lecture.

Rough gentleman

Victorian cellphone use

ink

...on location at Embarcadero Center looking down Davis.

Eviction in SF

Some good friends of ours are being evicted from their home of more than ten years.  They put up a sign in their window (much to the chagrin of the new owners of the building, heh heh!) reflecting that fact.  Stories of evictions are ever present in SF these days, hanging uneasily in the air everywhere you go.  It is certainly wrenching to witness it at close range.

I went to do a sketch of it, and it was kind of a bizarre experience.  It was a beautiful afternoon, people were idly lazing about in the park with their dogs, this cry of despair from the building hanging over them.  Did it give them pause?  Who can say.  One fellow was doing his qi gong exercises nearby, completely immersed within himself; not far from him, a homeless guy was sprawled out.  Truly, a microcosm of San Francisco today.

thought i had posted these...

...but i guess not.  from a couple of months ago...

Leuchtturm sketchbook

I had so much fun finishing this tiny 3"x5" sketchbook.  Ink brush and wash (water brush) with neon orange underdrawing.  Extremely portable, able to get a range of values, a good mix of drawing and painting....Interesting to see them en mass.  By and large I like how most of them turned out, but seeing them all together like this, I don't know that I necessarily achieved my goal of emphasizing value patterns over details...and I realized this as I was drawing too, but oh well.  I think it has something to do with how I construct my drawings, often using details as points of measurement.

 

TIme to make another trip to Flax, heh heh!

October challenge

Instigated by my wife, we have resolved to do a drawing or painting per day for the month of October, much like the popular "Inktober" drawing challenge one sees around the interwebs.  My other self-imposed condition will be that everything must be from life, and painting is preferrable over drawing.  And yes, yes, here we are, 6th day of the month, and here are only five (I started a day late):

building

Some more ink wash studies of construction equipment..

around town

SFAI

These are more sketches from my weekly excursions to the area area around the SF Art Institute  of late (North Beach essentially), done while waiting for my wife while she took a watercolor class.

The baked goods case of the Columbus Cafe:

Loading dock in the interior courtyard of the SFAI:

For these two below, I feel like I still ought to simplify and push the values further apart...hmmm...

Columbus Cafe again:

SFAI loading area stairs at night:

monument

...from a while back.  Market and Dolores.  It was sunny but really windy and, as I was sitting in the shadow of the swank new(ish) Whole Foods Market, my fingers went numb with cold.  Bad circulation I guess..

  

More skeletons

...of pending high-rises, that is..

more black and white thumbnails

I've been really enjoying these, especially after getting better control over ink flow.  However, I know I musn't be too enamored with the end results - they are only exercises after all!

night sketches

This was hard: hands going numb from cold wind, couldn't see my own sketchbook.  Still, I plan to do more of these.

ink and water brush

Originally I had bought this tiny sketchbook with the intent of using it to jot down art notes to myself (you know, actual writing) but it is so portable that i couldn't resist turning it into a sort of book o' thumbnails.  I have been having much fun with it, using some chinese calligraphy ink and water brush with (as a happy accident) a neon orange stabilo for the underdrawing.

Here are a few:

I think, however i will need to fill another water brush with a more diluted mixture for my mid-tones..