This is a new sketch I made from a magazine photo I found in my archives. I’m not sure where it originally came from, but I had written “doctor’s office” on the back.
It was drawn with a ZIG “Writer” marker, and his suit was tinted with a Prismacolor layout marker. The paper stock is 8.5 x 11 inches.
More feet to show this time including the attached calves, modeled again by my friend Alessandra. Drawn with a Uniball pen on tinted card stock, about 9 inches square.
Since I showed you some hands last time, how about some feet? These come from a photo of mine of a friend who has a lovely pair. Ink on paper, 8.5 x 11 inches.
Here are a few recent sketches of hands that I’ve drawn, taken from pages of magazines that I’ve saved over the years.
Here’s a tip for hanging a picture on a wall that you need to get perfectly straight: use an L-Square that has a bubble level gauge on it, such as this model made by Swanson. Hang the picture on the wire, place the l-square on one corner, adjust the frame angle until the bubble is centered, and then remove the l-square.
Another cheaper method that works fairly well is to take a thin strip of wood, and drive a nail into one end. Place the nail on one corner of the picture so that the wood balances on the edge, and use the wood strip like a plumb line to line up the edge of the frame. It can easily fall off, especially if the nail is too long or short, or the wood strip may be bent or not perfectly straight, and give a bad reading. A piece of plastic or metal might work better than wood.
I received an email notice today that this drawing of mine was accepted into a local art exhibition to open next month at the Live Oak Art Center. Details will follow.
Not only will the IRS help you with your tax filing, but it’s also a good place to go to just sit and sketch people. They’re usually going to be waiting for a long time, so you’ve got a captive model.
8 x 10 inches, drawn with two shades of layout markers.
After having my taxes done last week, I spotted this fellow in the hallway outside. His name was Mr. Whiten, and he had the security detail for the building. He was kind enough to let me take a few photos of him, and this is the result. He was a real talker while working over that cigar. The paper size is @ 8×10″.
A chapman was an Old English term used to describe a person who went door to door selling cheap goods. Among them were small books, called “chap-books”, that were often little more than stitched together pamphlets containing essays and poems with a few wood-carved illustrations. The McGill Library in Montreal has been running a digital scanning project for some time now to record many of these old texts.
In the late 1890s (1894 to be exact) a publishing house in Cambridge, MA started to issue a series of books called The Chap-Book that kept much of the same spirit, using inexpensive paper stock and selling them for 5 to 10 cents apiece. The artwork also had much of the same flavor, as well as small linear sketches and simple coloring to maintain that wood-cut look. Some of the regular artists who appeared in them were Fred Hazenplug and Fred Richardson. After relocating to Chicago, the publishers, H.S. Stone & Company, stopped their publication in 1898.
What I’ve found particularly enjoyable about these books is not just the content of their artists and writers, but the advertising they included within. They have led me to names of other artists and publishing houses that have been swallowed up by time. You can view many of these books at Archive.org.
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Artwork by D. B. Clemons 