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Sandy Beach Island of Foa, Ha’apai Group, Tonga

Day two hundred and nineteen: After I painted my favorite beach in Costa Rica the other day, my dad sent me a couple photos of his favorite beach in Tonga, where he and my mom are stationed as Peace Corps volunteers. This is a study of one of them. I particularly liked the deep grays and blues of the cloudy sky, dark water and wet sand. I must admit, I messed up the colors a bit, but still captured, I think, a sense of the view. Apparently it’s rare to be able to see the volcano that is thirty miles in the distance.

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2011 08 07 quick study Comments (2) Permalink

summer market vegetables

Day two hundred and eighteen: Keeping it simple after a productive day of errands and house chores, I thought I’d quickly sketch up a few of my favorite vegetables these days. Visiting the Rittenhouse Square market on Saturday mornings is a great way to start the weekend. On a whim today, I added a couple of ears of corn to my usual bounty, and I roasted them in the oven for dinner. Beets and green beans have been on the shopping list for a few weeks now, but I just don’t seem to tire of their fresh summer flavor.

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2011 08 06 quick study Comments (0) Permalink

sunrise at Corcovado, Costa Rica

Day two hundred and seventeen: After several days of black and white pencil sketches, when I pondered what I should draw today, the first thing that came to mind was COLOR. Then I remembered what I have been calling my favorite beach in the world: the stretch of sand between Carate and the Corcovado National Forest in Cost Rica. Big, crashing Pacific waves, almost no people, and the promise of scarlet macaws. This oil pastel sketch is based on a photo I took there at the crack of dawn on what promised to be a hot and humid tropical day. I love the way the sun blazes over the trees and transforms the rain forest mists and ocean haze into a splendid burst of color.

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2011 08 05 composition
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scribbled into something

Day two hundred and sixteen: I was invited to my first dinner party in Philadelphia! My co-worker, Eliza, and her husband invited me to a little dinner party they had. It was delicious and fun, but I found myself home later than when I usually finish my sketch. Wiped out, and without a subject, I just let my mind unwind and my hand start to scribble. Like finding shapes in clouds, I started to see a man on a bike, so I went with it. Of course, I get almost everywhere on a bike, it’s no real surprise that my mind would go there! The door was added to fill in space, and because that’s what the door is like at Eliza’s apartment. I wonder if the early Surrealists would have appreciated this method of drawing, composed from a stream of consciousness? Sketch done? Check!

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2011 08 04 quick study Comments (0) Permalink

old Dutch book study

Day two hundred and fifteen: This morning one of the curators asked the fellows (me and Brooks) if we could take a look at a Dutch book by Samuel Ampzing in praise of the city of Haarlem, and published in 1628. There are many engraved illustrations throughout the text, made by the notable printmakers like Pieter Saenredam and Jan van de Velde II. I spent the afternoon carefully paging through the fragile book, finding and noting all the printed pictures, measuring them, and writing down their inscriptions. Sitting back for a moment about half way through, I thought the study table with my pencil, magnifying glass, and papers, along with the book nestled in a pillow, would make a nice sketch. All that’s missing is the little tape measure and the spatula I use to turn the pages.

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2011 08 03 quick study Comments (0) Permalink

one view of mount fuji

Day two hundred and fourteen: I’ve encountered a couple of impressions from Katsushika Hokusai’s color woodcut series “36 Views of Mount Fuji” (circa 1820s) at work the last few weeks. When I poke about my computer for travel photos of things to draw, I usually run across one I took in 2004 of Mount Fuji around dawn, as seen from Tokyo. It was a particularly clear morning, with just a bit of haze around the base of the mountain. Although Fuji and Hokusai are Japanese, I was thinking of the early 20th-century Scottish printmaker, D. Y. Cameron, while I was sketching, and tonight’s sketch evokes a bit of his landscape style.

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2011 08 02 artist tribute
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apartment over Waverly

Day two hundred and thirteen: Continuing the “life in Philly” theme, today’s drawing is an impression of the exterior of my apartment building. Although my address is technically Pine Street, my apartment is in the rear of the building, and overlooks a very narrow residential alley-like street called Waverly. I park my bike inside the locked wooden fence, so I sketched myself arriving home from work. Caprica can be seen peeking out on the third floor here, although in reality you’d never see him in that particular window. His cage sits next to a window further along the same wall, but can’t be easily seen from this perspective.

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2011 08 01 quick study Comments (1) Permalink

first row, Schuylkill

Day two hundred and twelve: A few days ago my friend and fellow rower, Michael H., said he was waiting to see a drawing about rowing in Philadelphia. Today I finally made it on the water: another rowing friend, Dan, got me in a single and onto the Schuylkill River for the first time. The quick sketch here depicts the view from the shell as I launched from boathouse row and began to scull up river. It’s especially meaningful for me that the enormous, neo-classical building on the hill is the Philadelphia Museum of Art, which is where I work. Beautiful venue!

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2011 07 31 quick study Comments (2) Permalink

Vigeland sculpture, Oslo, Norway

Day two hundred and eleven: In some ways it doesn’t really matter what the subject of the daily sketch may be: it’s can be very peaceful and relaxing to simply figure out how to represent something with line, light, dark, or color, as it flows spontaneously. Tonight I found a photo that I took a couple summers ago in at the Vigeland Sculpture Park in Oslo, Norway. The park is filled with sculptures of people, and there is a great sense of humanity and community there. I chose to sketch this snapshot for its striking balance of power and simplicity. The man seems both humble and heroic as he holds the baby. On a whim, I added color to the pencil sketch because the background in the photograph was pale sky, and the sculpture itself a steely, stone blue. But in the end it needed highlights, so I included a few patches and lines of white, which in turn reminded me of a chiaroscuro woodcut print. It would be fun to try and make a color woodcut of this image with two shades of blue, black, and white.

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2011 07 30 artist tribute
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someplace in Rome

Day two hundred and ten: Feeling uninspired, it took me awhile to land on this subject for today’s sketch. While I was scrolling through travel snapshots, I started drawing only the trees in this picture, but ended up scrawling in the architecture too. I’m not sure the exact location, but it is somewhere along the Tiber river, probably across from the area of Trestevere. In the end, it was fun to quickly pencil in the basics as if I was in Rome without a camera and wanted to remember the view.

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2011 07 29 quick study Comments (0) Permalink