CRUMBLIKE PRACTICE #4

On vacation I had a Uniball pen and a small 8 1/2" x 5 " Moleskine sketchbook along and did some Crumb like sketches for practice. Added some Speedball super black India ink too.

CRUMBLIKE PRACTICE #3

On vacation I had a Uniball pen and a small 8 1/2" x 5 " Moleskine sketchbook along and did some Crumb like sketches for practice. Added some Speedball super black India ink too.

CRUMBLIKE PRACTICE #2

On vacation I had a Uniball pen and a small 8 1/2" x 5 " Moleskine sketchbook along and did some Crumb like sketches for practice.  Added some Speedball super black India ink too.

CRUMB LIKE PRACTICE

On vacation I had a Uniball pen and a small 8 1/2" x 5 " Moleskine sketchbook along and did some Crumb like sketches for practice.

FEEDING TIME

11 1/2" x 8 1/2" Uniball pen and Faber-Castell Pitt big brush pens in Moleskine A3 sketchbook. From an old advertising poster. It shows the many uses for a cowboy hat.

RED CLOUD

11 1/2" x 8 1/2" Uniball pen and Faber-Castell Pitt big brush pens in Moleskine A3 sketchbook. The Plains Indians, led by Oglala Lakota leader Red Cloud, were victorious in what has gone down in history as Red Cloud’s War (1866-1868). The Army had built three forts—Stephen Kearny, Reno, C.F. Smith—on the Bozeman Trail that ran from near Fort Laramie to the gold fields of Montana Territory. The Treaty of Fort Laramie in 1868 gave the Indians control of the Powder River Country, at least temporarily, and they burned down the three abandoned forts in late July. Red Cloud finally signed the treaty in November after the forts were no more.

STEVE McQUEEN and GERONIMO

Steve McQueen 11 1/2"  x 8 1/2" and Geronimo  11 1/2" x 8 1/2" Uniball pen, Faber-Castell Pitt big brush pens and China Marker in Moleskine A3 sketchbook.  Inspired by one of my favorite movies (Tom Horn 1980).  I especially like one of the first scenes where the future heavyweight champion picks a fight with Horn because Horn declares that “Geronimo's a man so great, that Corbett there would have to stand on his mothers shoulders to kiss his ass…”.

KURT VONNEGUT

KURT VONNEGUT - 11 1/2" x 8 1/2" Uniball pen, Fude brush and Faber-Castell Pitt big brush pens in Moleskine A3 sketchbook. "The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way to make life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven's sake."

DAVE

11 1/2" x 8 1/2" Uniball pen, Fude brush and Faber-Castell Pitt big brush pens in Moleskine A3 sketchbook. Dave is our computer genius nephew who lives in California. This may be the first portrait I've done of him and I hope he likes it. Time for a visit Dave!

LANDSCAPE

11 1/2" x 8 1/2" Uniball pen and Faber-Castell Pitt big brush pens in Moleskine A3 sketchbook

SITTING BULL 1831 - 1890

11 1/2" x 8 1/2" Uniball pen and watercolor in Moleskine A4 sketchbook

PRELIMINARY SKETCH

 11 1/2" x 8 1/2" Uniball pen and Faber-Castell Pitt big brush pens in Moleskine A3 sketchbook. Once I get it corrected and sussed out I'll do a large painting with acrylics.

STUDY FOR BUFFALO

 11 1/2" x 8 1/2" Fude brush and acrylic in Moleskine A3 sketchbook.  This from work by Larry Pirnie an amazing artist whose work I study because it really loosens me up color wise.

REMINGTON SKETCH

 8 /12" x 5 1/2" Uniball pen and ink in Stillman and Birn Beta sketchbook. We were off to the Oregon coast to beat the heat last week and do some gambling. I wasn't going to sketch but found a pen and pencil with this sketchbook in my bag along with a Remington book and a True West magazine. Might as well try to learn from a master like Frederick Remington so sketched this.

PRELIMINARY SKETCH 7 HORSES

8 1/2" x 11 1/2" Uniball pen, Watercolor, Acrylic and ink in Moleskine A4 sketchbook. I'm planning a big colorful painting of these seven horses and that requires some sketchbook work.

TOM MIX MOVIE POSTER

11 1/2" x 8 1/2" Uniball pen, Fude brush and watercolor in Moleskine A4 sketchbook.  Our Rio is a cowgirl and recently asked me to start painting horses again so I'm getting back into the swing of it.

IN A MEDICI VILLA

11 1/2" x 8 1/2" Uniball pen and watercolor in Moleskine A4 sketchbook. (From a painting by Sargent). I've been reading about John Singer Sargent and I'm completely fascinated by his watercolors. I decided to play fast and loose with the colors and texture to loosen up and have some fun while getting back into watercolor.

DAVID McCULLOUGH AT WORK

8 1/2" x 11 1/2" Uniball pen, watercolor and china marker in Moleskine A4 sketchbook (from photo)

DAVID McCULLOUGH WORLD HEADQUARTERS

11 1/2" x 8 1/2" Uniball pen and watercolor in Moleskine A4 sketchbook. One of my favorite writers is David McCullough. He works in this little building on his property and insists that it is not a shed, it's his office or "world headquarters". He has received 2 Pulitzer prizes and has written all of his books on a beautiful second hand manual Royal typewriter. No telephone, computer or distractions in this HQ. Adults not welcome but small children are allowed. His latest book is The Wright Brothers. If you like great stories I highly recommend all of his work. His watercolors are great too!

SANDMAN

SANDMAN  11 1/2" x 8 1/2" Speedball super black India ink and Winsor Newton Series 7 #2 brush in Canson sketchbook

OUT IN THE WARD

PATIENT ON THE WARD

NURSE ON THE WARD

CUCKOO'S NEST

Rereading some favorite books and trying out some illustration ideas. This from the Sketches Introduction to the 40th anniversary edition of One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest: "Eight o'clock every morning I showed up at the vets' hospital in Menlo PRereading some favorite books and trying outark ready to roll. The doctor deposited me in a little room on his ward, dealt me a couple of pills or a shot or a little glass of bitter juice, then locked the door. He checked back every forty minutes to see if I was still alive, took some tests, asked some questions, left again. The rest of the time I spent studying the inside of my forehead, or looking out the one little window in the door. It was six inches wide and eight inches high, and it had heavy chicken wire inside the glass. You get your visions through whatever gate you're granted. Patients straggled by in the hall outside, their faces all ghastly confessions. Sometimes I looked at them and sometimes they looked at me, but rarely did we look at one another. It was too naked and painful. More was revealed in a human face than a human being can bear, face to face.Sometimes the nurse came by and checked on me. Her face was different. It was painful business, but not naked. This was not a person you could allow yourself to be naked in front of."

LUCIFER MORNINGSTAR

11 1/2" x 8 1/2" Uniball pen and Faber-Castell Pitt big brush pens in Canson sketchbook

RORSCHACH HANDS, NO PROBLEM

11" x 16" Pentel brush pen and ink in Canson sketchbook

GREAMING IN THE FOURTH DIMENSION

18" x 24" Mixed Media on paper. I've been reading all of Neil Gaiman's Sandman series from the beginning as well as re-reading Cuckoo's Nest trying to come up with illustrations for it. Kind of mixed them up.

RALPH STEADMAN'S LITTLE SONG

11 1/2" x 8 1/2" ink in Canson sketchbook

PORTRAIT OF DANIEL

11 1/2" x 8 1/2" ink in Canson sketchbook.  He turns 94 years old today. "One is called to live nonviolently, even if the change one works for seems impossible. It may or may not be possible to turn the US around through nonviolent revolution. But one thing favors such an attempt: the total inability of violence to change anything for the better" -- Daniel Berrigan

Daniel Berrigan, SJ (1921-)

Peace activist and writer Daniel Berrigan, SJ, was born in Virginia, Minnesota, in 1921. His father Thomas Berrigan was a second-generation Irish Catholic. His mother Frieda Fromhart, of German descent, would feed any hungry itinerant who would come to the door during the Great Depression. Although his father had left the Church, Daniel remained attracted to the Catholic faith. Directly out of high school in 1939, he became a member of the Society of Jesus and was ordained in 1952.

Daniel was deeply influenced by his younger brother Philip. Philip served in the army during World War II and after the war became a Josephite priest. Daniel marched with Philip in the civil rights movement at Selma in 1965. As Philip became more active in the antiwar movements against U.S. involvement in Vietnam in the late 1960s, Daniel joined him in the protests. Their most famous protest was in 1968. With seven other participants, Daniel and Philip burned 378 files of young men who were to be drafted for military service. This led to the Berrigans’ arrest with the other members of their group. For a time Philip and Daniel avoided their prison dates and were on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted List. Eventually Daniel served two years in prison and was released in 1972. Berrigan wrote of the incident and the trial in his play The Trial of the Catonsville Nine.

Other protests followed, leading to more arrests and prosecutions. From 1970 to 1995, Berrigan spent a total of nearly seven years in prison. He has continued his peace activism, protesting against the 1991 Gulf War, the Kosovo War, the U.S invasion of Afghanistan, and the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Berrigan’s political involvement has overshadowed his accomplishments as a writer and a poet. His reflections on war resistance, his time in prison, and peace appear in some 35 books of essays and poetry. Berrigan reflected on his life in his 1988 autobiography To Dwell in Peace.

Berrigan now lives and writes in New York at the 98th Street Jesuit Community.

YOU GET WHAT ANYONE GETS...YOU GET A LIFETIME

22" x 30" Mixed media on Arches paper

THE BARDO OF DEATH

11 1/2" x 8 1/2" Fude brush, Yasutomo black Sumi ink, crowquill pen and acrylic in Canson sketchbook. "For an ordinary person, the trauma of death produces a state of unconsciousness, which lasts for an indefinite time: it may be very brief or quite long. Traditionally, this period of blackout is considered to last three and a half days. Afterwards, the consciousness of the individual begins to awaken again and experience things in a new way. The interval of unconsciousness into which the mind is plunged by the trauma of death, and which lasts till the awakening of consciousness again, is referred to in Tibetan as the 'chö nyi bardo', the interval of the ultimate nature of phenomena; here the mind is plunged into its own nature, though in a confused or ignorant way.
The next phase of the after-death experience is the reawakening of consciousness, which includes the many days that can be spent experiencing the fantastic projections of mind, the hallucinations produced and experienced by the mind in the after-death state. " - Kalu Rinpoche

FINISHED PORTRAIT

All of the shadow areas are done with the speedball ink.  After it dried I put about three more layers on.  Using the markers I would compare the values against two other values and then mark an area in and blend it with my thumb to get that rough surface that I like.  Don't panic when the paper starts to come apart in little balls.  And enjoy the fact that your fingertips are going to get really, really black.  Be careful what you touch...no folding white shirts on laundry day!  I was going to work more on the halftone transition areas but I kind of like the abrupt hard edges seen on the chin, cheek  and neck.  That's how I use the ink, brush and Faber Castell Pitt big brush marker pens in black and white.

DRAWING THE BIG AREAS OF DARK WORKING TO THE LIGHTS

I start working with the Speedball super black India ink using a #3 watercolor brush.  I used a little water with the ink in a little section where is see the shadow turning into the halftone just to see how it compares to the photograph.  Every area will be drawn with the various combinations of markers after this initial stage.  Remember not do draw a facial feature but the effect on the light on the forms. That is what I concentrate on and observe.

THE VALUES: LIGHT, HALFTONE AND SHADOW USING FABER-CASTELL PITT BIG BRUSH PENS

I take a piece of paper and make a chart using the brush pens that I'm going to use.  Black (which I'll use for smaller areas of shadow).  For the large mass of shadow I'll use Speedball super black India ink applied with a watercolor brush.  The top row left to right is Cool grey VI, IV, III and I.  The bottom row is Warm grey V, IV, III, I.  For white I may use the Faber Castell Pitt white or sometimes a China white marker.

I always keep a large piece of bristol paper underneath or to the side of my drawings to test out the markers or to combine markers to see what value is produced.

The six kinds of value are:

 Light - The areas that lie most nearly the right angle to the main light source.
Halftone - Area not squarely facing the main light source as it tilts
Shadow - When a plane turns completely away so that no mail light is on it.
Reflected light - Light that bounces back into the shadow
Cast shadow - A light intercepted by a form which then projects the effect onto another plane.
Highlight - A shiny or reflective surface reflecting back the original light source.

Value:  The position of the color on the above chart

DO THE DRAWING

I did the drawing next.  For this exercise I'm not caring much about getting the likeness.  I just try to loosely draw the contours.  If getting a likeness is that important I can make a graph using one inch boxes and place it over the photograph and make a corresponding graph on the paper to work from, or trace it on the page or even use a projector for a large work.  It's a lot more fun to eyeball it though.
This one will be a lot of fun because there is going to be a huge amount of dark area.  

BLACK AND WHITE VALUES

Several people have asked for a step by step explanation of how I go about drawing a portrait using the Faber Castell Pitt big brush pens and ink.  This is the photo of artist Roy Lichtenstein that I will be working from.  The  MOST IMPORTANT thing to remember in this exercise is that I will not be drawing eyes, ears, a nose or any other feature but rather drawing the effect of light spilling over these features.  Concentrate on that effect. Spend a lot of time just looking at  how the light spills over and observe the degree, intensity and direction of the light striking Roy before you begin.  Next I will draw an outline to work from.

TAXI ! WHERE TO?

11 1/2" x 8 1/2" Pentel pocket brush pen and Faber Castell Pitt big brush pens in Canson sketchbook.

THE WOLFMAN

19" x 24" Acrylic, Speedball super black India ink, Winsor Newton Series 7 #3 brush and Faber Castell Pitt big brush pens on Bristol paper.  Even a man who is pure in heart and says his prayers by night may become a wolf when the wolfbane blooms and the autumn moon is bright.  ( The Wolfman 11941)

THE JOB OF THE WRITER

19" x 24" Speedball super black India ink, Ph Martin red ink, Winsor Newton #8 Tolle 520 brush and Faber Castell Pitt big brushes on Bristol paper. "The job of the writer is to pull the judge down into the docket, get the person who is high down low, make him feel what it's like where it's low". - Nelson Algren

PORTRAIT OF FRANCESCO

11 1/2" x 8 1/2" Pentel brush pen, Speedball Super Black India ink, Winsor Newton Series 7 #3 brush and Faber Castell Pitt big brush pens in Canson sketchbook. From photo by David Seidner. An exercise in values with light striking an object and travelling over it.

QUICK SKETCH EXERCISE

11 1/2" x 8 1/2" Uniball pen in Canson sketchbook just trying to exercise the eyes and hands while looking at and copying from Jame Jean sketches.

CONDO PICASSO

11 1/2" x 8 1/2" Pental brush pen and Faber Castell Pitt big brush pens in Canson sketchbook.  This is what happens after looking at work by George Condo and Pablo Picasso.  It's fun to draw cubist style work, great eye/hand exercise and kids love it.

OREGON COAST

16 1/2" x 11 1/2" Uniball pen, watercolor and Faber Castell Pitt big brush pens in Canson sketchbook. Another quick sketch on a lazy day.

PORTRAIT OF LUCIEN FREUD

11 1/2" x 8 1/2" Fude brush and Faber Castell Pitt big brush pens in Moleskine A3 sketchbook. My nephew Dean Simpson and pal Andy Simpkin took me down to London in 2002 to see the Freud show at the National Gallery. It was one of the highlights of my art life. Lucien is being judged harshly now after his death because of the way he lived his life, but I am reluctant to judge him because of my hard won understanding of human fallibility, beginning with my own.

FATHER DAN ON THE WAY TO THE CAN

11 1/2" x 8 1/2" Fude brush and Faber Castell Pitt big brush pens in Moleskine A3 sketchbook (from photo by Thomas Good). A good man who helped the poor and stood up for his belief in non-violence. When asked how many times he has been arrested for protesting against war and nuclear weapons, he said "Not enough". He will turn 94 years old on May 9th. "We spoke out, committed civil disobedience, and went to jail because the peace hangs senselessly and precariously upon weapons costing billions to build and billions to improve — weapons which become more useless as we add to their destructive force. With this money we could have fed the world's people. Half the children on earth go to bed hungry — millions more have retarding and stunting protein deficiencies. Instead of building the peace by attacking injustices like starvation, disease, illiteracy, political and economic servitude, we spend a trillion dollars on war since 1946, until hatred and conflict have become the international preoccupation."

QUICK STUDIES

QUICK STUDIES - 11 1'2" x 8 1'2" Uniball pen and Faber-Castell Pitt big brush pens in Canson sketchbook. For practice I've been looking at and drawing a lot from James jean sketches. The way he runs things together in his sketchbooks creates some great dreamlike images.

FAST AND LOOSE SKETCH FROM JAMES JEAN SKETCH

More fast and loose sketches with a Uniball pen while looking at James Jean sketches.  11 1/2" x 8 1/2" in Canson sketchbook