Way behind now

Have just done my sums, and if I am to catch up for postings lost before the end of May I have to post 26 sketches by the end of next week. Eek !

Like this one although it is kind of odd. Like the eye socket bit. The whole eye described in one line. ( well, one and a bit ! )

Two collars 155 - 156

Two from those long cold winter days that, as I sit here in shorts and t-shirt, have already been forgotten.

Both with their collars turned up against the wind.

Neither very good drawings.

But the symmetry of theme appeals.

Bench hug

Not sure if that is technically a hug or a possessive grip he has on her there.

Runner

Got to set sooooo early on Saturday, and I mean insanely early. Sat in my car until a few more people turned up, and sketched the crew as they ambled to breakfast and the start of the day.

This is one of the runners, very hard worked and enthusiastic individuals who do anything and everything needed, checking their call sheets, making sure they know where the next demand will be coming from.

Loved her hood.

Another hair affair

Look ! Could have posted her with the others the other day !

Hair is an amazing thing to draw. It can be almost everything. It can be solid and dark, it can be fine and hardly there. It can define the shape of a skull, or hide someone's features almost completely. It can give a drawing weight, or ruin it irredeemably.

It is, in effect, a sculpture that you choose to make and carry with you everywhere.

Budget sums 151

Caught sight of the guy as the train I was on pulled into a station, and he stood up n the next seating block along, and leaned forward to see the name of where we were, with his arm behind him holding onto the handrail.

And I had to quickly grab a sketch.

Like the line of his neck and throat, that stretching lean forward at it's most tension.

And along the edge there are the scribbles of sums from an old budget. A job budget, not my own... never have to do sums to know how much money I have... because it is always zilch.

bad hair daze 149 - 150

I need a haircut, it's all over the place and makes me feel even scruffier that I look at the moment, after a day of driving backwards and forwards, buying odd stuff, cleaning old sockets off, and generally getting covered in paint and dust.

So two sketches of girls

with flyaway hair.

This top one was on the way back from being in town quite late, she was reading a copy of one of those celebrity magazines.

The other I cannot remember at all, but like the shape of her neck.

Train text

Have loaded this one elsewhere, he is on my web site, albeit tucked away as a secret little treat for those curious, or foolish enough to get click happy.

Like the sleeves on his coat.

He was another fellow train passenger, I was standing up and looking down the carriage, and he was in my sight line.

Blimey oh Riley !

This is one of those sketches that everything is out of relation with itself, yet pleases me when I look at it. Since when were the centre of your ears level with your eyebrows ?

It makes him look either stern, or focused. Am always interested in how far you can push a face and still have it read properly and not as caricature.

Had a brilliant conversation with one of the painters yesterday about J. C. Leyendecker. It was a rare pleasure to encounter another enthusiast, unexpected. Now there is an artist whose handling of paint astounds me. The energy in the creases in his clothing is just the mutt's... how it manages to be both realistic and totally abstract at the same time. Inspirational.

Work has swallowed me whole this week. ( oh er Missus !!! ) Am in the office waiting for them to wrap so I can go home and fall asleep.

Oh, and found a web site for a place called MDF WORLD. And it amuses me to imagine it the dullest theme park in Britain.

146 - another tricky plastic fork

How do we ever eat anything with them ?

Miss-cellaneous Ladies x 4

Okay, this is a desperate attempt to catch up with the lost time over the last few weeks. And a very loose theme of women of a certain age.

All staunch and upright and viewing the world, but holding their counsel.

This drawing has a touch of the Giacometti going on, a little elongated. And the hint of a real humdinger of a handbag. An essential accessory.

And every one of them certainly as loopy, and restless, and amazing as we all are, inside.

In fact I can now fully see that every face, every person I stop to look at, is as complete and complex a story as you could ever imagine. Every one of us, totally centered in their own drama, moving forward, looking back, messing it up, understanding, writing each line from inside that warm scribble that makes us go.

Impossible to do any other.

( I was going to go out today and do a whole new load of drawings to post, but it has been torrenting down with rain since last night, and whilst that is grand for all the plants in the garden, it doesn't exactly inspire me to go out sketching. And that's my excuse. )