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

Salesforce Tower going up fast!

A relatively quiet Sunday afternoon.  It had been a while since I visited this construction site, and it's pretty mind blowing how fast it has been rising:

Although my focus had been on the tower under construction, I was a little thrown off by the complicated angles and glass patterns on the building in front of the site.  In my attempts to de-emphasize it, I decided to knock it back in value, which in retrospect, I think I went too far.  The building (with the exception of the tinted glass sheath) was actually a bit warmer, and I should have just kept it as it was.  As a result, not only did I half-ass the other individual windows, but the buildings don't separate very well.  Meh!  Next time.

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!