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 […]
Also tagged cartoon, landscape, pencil, waterDay 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 […]
Also tagged landscape, pencilDay two hundred and nine: Biking home from the UPS customer service center as dusk fell, I got to experience the view of downtown Philadelphia at night. It doesn’t really look like this. The sketch was co-inspired by a photograph by Paul Strand of rooftops of tall buildings that I saw from above. It doesn’t […]
Also tagged oilDay one hundred and ninety-seven: On the way to Rittenhouse Square from my apartment is a little art gallery, selling what appears to be late 19th and early 20th-century paintings. There’s one in the window of a little impressionist view of a Venetian canal. I don’t know who the artist might be, but I like […]
Also tagged pencil, veniceDay one hundred and ninety-three: I guess it’s going to be a hit-and-miss kind of week. I rushed through this sketch inspired by a theoretical building design by the 18th-century French architect Étienne-Louis Boullée. I saw the original in the study gallery of the Uffizi in Florence a few years ago, and stumbled across a […]
Also tagged art on art, oil, pencilDay one hundred and eighty-nine: Nothing fancy to complicated today. This simply painting was inspired by a fleeting view of a tunnel in an episode from the new Sherlock Holmes series that I was watching after dinner, desperately hoping to be inspired to draw rather than fall asleep. It’s been a long, wonderful, busy week […]
Also tagged abstract, oilDay one hundred and eighty-two: This simple pencil drawing of the decorative mantle in my new apartment was made from memory in two short sessions. I started sketching in a restaurant while waiting for my dinner, but my food came, and I set the iPhone aside. Back in the new place I noticed a few […]
Also tagged bird, pencilDay one hundred and seventy-seven: While looking for something to sketch today, I came across a photo that I took in Pompeii in June 2010. I don’t remember exactly where among the ruins I found these broken columns, but I liked the way they were framed against the blue Amalfi-coast sky in the snapshot. Impatient […]
Also tagged ancient, art on art, oil, stoneDay one hundred and fifty-six: Watching the sun break over the mountains and illuminate the Inca city of Machu Picchu is a spectacular experience. After checking in at the sun temple to confirm that it is not quite the winter solstice, I took this photo of the eastern ruins casting shadows across the grassy central […]
Also tagged landscape, nature, oilDay one hundred and fifty-five: After hiking straight up about 941 feet via a steep and twisting series of stone steps, squeezing through a narrow tunnel, and tentatively perching myself on the the knife-shaped summit of Waynapicchu Moutain (altitude 8,924 feet), I snapped an aerial view photo of the Machu Picchu complex below. I had […]
Also tagged landscape, nature, oil