My parents sent me a gift certificate to the Dick Blick art supply store, so today I went shopping. I went there with the intention of buying a set of good colored pencils and few black permanent markers in varying thicknesses (including a brush tip, which I’ve never used before). As I perused the aisles lusting after much of what I saw, I came across a Niji waterbrush. I’ve read several blogs that espouse the wonderfulness of these things, so I grabbed one.

Cookies would have been better. But at least this was healthy. And since it was a piece of fruit, it qualifies as my entry for Everyday Matters Challenge #24.

For the second time in just over a week, having my sketchbook with me at lunchtime paid off. If I had left it at home, I doubt very much that I would have seeked out paper and pencil. But, since I had the stuff with me and a few extra minutes at my disposal, it worked out. I’ve mentioned my aversion to lettering in the past. And as I started to draw this, my first thoughts were, “how can I fake the sign?

This was a real quickie… like, under 10 minutes. I spent most of my evening setting up and photographing still-lifes. Over the weekend, I built a frame for a backdrop (I’ll be writing a post about that at some point in the near future, so you can build one yourself), and I was anxious to try it out. Unfortunately, I spent the bulk of my time trying to figure out how to get my camera to behave correctly — white balance is really important when you’re taking pictures of eggs on a white background.

I’m just bored with this guy. And it shows. His face lacks the character and depth of the original painting, in particular when compared with the jacket (which I am really happy with, by the way). I’ve lost focus and just can’t seem to concentrate on getting the values to match any more. So you know what? I’m moving on to other subjects. Maybe I’ll come back to it someday and finish it (don’t hold your breath), but this has taken way too many hours and I’m just not that into it.

I had plans outside the house tonight; so I was only able to spend about 45 minutes. I like the way this is coming together, but there is a war going on in my head. On one side is an army of perfectionists who want the outcome to be beautiful and accurate no matter how long it takes. They are highly skilled, disciplined and precise. On the other side is a rag-tag crew of militant anti-perfectionists (is there really no English word that means the opposite of ‘perfectionist’!

I’m feeling a little tired today (didn’t sleep well at all last night, and I have no idea why), but I still managed to spend about 30 minutes this evening on the Manet copy. I wanted to start with the darkest darks first, so I can judge everything else against that baseline. I used an 8B pencil and a blending stump for the darkest parts of the jacket. I have a little work to do to fix the face, but I was pretty sure that if I tried that tonight, it would just make things worse.

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about how I’d like to develop my drawing style. As much as I admire the photorealistic work that some people can achieve, and as much as I’d like to get to the point that I can achieve that myself, I think I’d rather focus on developing a painterly style. What better way to develop that style than to copy a few paintings? This is a work by Manet that I’m copying from an image on my laptop.

I’ve been carrying my sketchbook back and forth to work every day for the past few months. I wake up in the morning, get ready for work, and dutifully drop the sketchbook and pencil bag into my laptop case; then off to work I go. I’ve purposely avoided setting any goals like, “I’m going to draw at lunch today,” or “I’m going to stop somewhere on the way to work and sketch the people going by.

These guys (TV on the Radio) were the featured band on Saturday Night Live this past weekend. Man, I love the ability to pause live TV.