Quick pose

In between poses at life drawing, the model covered up and knelt to check her phone, and it was so nice I had to catch it.

Funny to sneak a drawing of the model clothed in between session of drawing her naked. Like a reversal of things.

A B C

Always Be Closing.

This guy was running the whole gamut of sales technique on his phone. And not getting very far.

" I know, I know, we've been like..., I call when you are in a meeting, then you call when I am in a meeting."

" Three license sets, that is what I think you should be taking. To be honest the price difference between three and two is minimal. It's £9,000 for three, £8,000 for two. I am struggling to make this work for us. We only really deal with customers big enough to warrant three licenses. And you are a company so I can't really sell as a private individual. To be honest they have set a minimum spend of £55,000 for a company. I shouldn't even be doing this. I will get pulled up over this but I can talk myself out of it.

'Okay, well let's leave it there, have a think about it and come back to me before the day is out."

New book.

Have a new sketch book. It's a sort of cheap imitation Moleskine, but I like it a lot. It's pages are yellowy creamy smooth and good for pen.

These were done on the tram in Manchester one saturday.

I liked how this guy was sitting in the seat in front of his friends, and sat sideways with his arm over the seat to talk to them. 

Clothes maketh the man

Saw the Humphrey Ocean works at the NPG over the weekend. Massively inspired by them.

And it made me realise how what we choose to wear says so much about us. Of course, I know if you see someone in a three piece suit you can safely assume they aren't off down the sewers. And they want you to know that.

But this went beyond that. How the anonymity of ordinary, everyday clothes still says so much. How even how you try to disappear says stuff about you.

This guy was on the train into town, and I was taken by his diagonal quilted jacket. What does that say about him?

What does that say about me ?

And then he made this brilliant pose.

Smart phones

As always.

It is the default pose of the urban commuter. Eyes down, finger typing or thumb scrolling.

Has the next evolution of the human started ?

Book 'em Danno

Rounding up the usual suspects.

A few loose sketches from the past few weeks.

Too wonderful...

... to not try to catch.

Haven't managed to get even half of the simple beauty of them. 

Applehands

As in anything you do consistently, you occasionally make little alterations and refinements to the way you do it, and gradually, accumulatively, you get better. So it is with sketching, I find I will make a mark, or a way of dealing with something that works well, and I use it again until it becomes part of the whole.

This is often just stylistic things, the real changes - how you really see things, how you interpret everything around you - happen magnificently rarely. This isn't one of those posts.

But what does happen, is all the little tricks and quirks you have added come together and you do a drawing that seems to you to be a new step forward. A sign post that you are on vaguely the right path.

Or at least some kind of path, rather than thrashing in the brambles.

Yesterday gave me just such a sketch.

You'll need to click on it and enlarge it as it gets a bit lost as it sits here.

Usually I sketch and turn the page, move on to the next one, and only really go back and look at what I drew at the end of the day. This one stopped me, and made me think, you know, I like that.

The guy was intent on doing something with his i-phone ( nothing new there then ) and I took the opportunity to focus on his hands, trying to see the shapes and structure of them, as his thumbs jabbed and swiped.

What do I think makes this a signpost sketch ? The way I now treat hair. The hands. Loving hands, but they are BUGGERS to draw. The lack of wrong lines. ( only one and I shaded it in to loose it ).

The overallnessness of it.

I don't really know.

Okay, trumpet blown, back slapped. Going back to the day job.