Amanda in her Office

Amanda had an appointment this morning and then bussed to work and was going to walk home so texted me to see if I’d wait after class and we could walk home together… I stayed late after class to finish things and clean up then made my way to her office.

She wasn’t quite ready to leave.

So I drew a picture.

Then we walked home together.

(The line drawing was done in the office, colour added later at home)

Virtual Studio - Thursday Portrait Challenges

About a year ago, I joined Twitter again... I decided I would only follow artists and game nerds and turn off all retweets, and just not follow or engage with anyone political. It's been a much better experience. 

Not that I'm apolitical... it's... a long story... involving algorithms and mental health and the polarity and divisiveness of politics on the internet today... I just see no point in it on Twitter, because no one, EVER, read a tweet or a meme and said "huh, you know what, I never thought of it that way... I'm going to change my whole worldview..."

I digress... 

Very soon after rejoining, I discovered Virtual Studion (@studioteabreak - on twitter). They post a number of challenges each week; Mythical Mash-up Mondays, Shape Challenges on Tuesday and Wednesday, and a Portrait Challenge on Thursdays. I've participate in most of them at one point or another, but mostly the Thursday Portrait Challenges. 

Each Thursday they post a portrait and invite anyone make their own version, interpreting it in any way or style and share it on twitter. It has been really fun seeing all the different interpretations and styles and media used for these. 

I did a number of them... then got busy with other things and stopped... and am trying to get back to doing them again. 

Here are a few I've done...

This is the most recent - from TODAY - from the Portrait of a Hamal from Moush, painted by Simon Agopyan (1857 - 1921)

This was last week's - from the portrait of Theodora van Duvenvoorde, originally painted in oils on canvas in 1620 by Michiel van Mierevelt - all of my reproductions have been done in ink and/or watercolour in a watercolour sketchbook. 

The rest are going back to August or earlier... 

Old Woman, painted in oils on canvas by Ludovico Carracci in 1590 

I THINK this is the first thursday Portrait Challenge I participated in, back in March! It is based on the self-portrait, painted by Kohno Michisei in 1917 

14 April 2022 - Here is one where I had a little bit more fun with the interpretation... the painted posted was Portrait of a Young Woman with Puck the Dog, originally painted around 1879 by Thérèse Schwartze. When I first looked at it, THIS image of Lucy and Snoopy from Peanuts just popped into my head and I kind of knew I HAD to do it... 

12 May 2022 - From Two Sisters, orignally painted by Cornelis de Vos of Antwerp sometime between 1610−1615 

19 May 2022 - from "Portrait of a Man" (probably politician Robert de Masmines), originally painted in oils on panel by Robert Campin in the 1430s

31 May 2022 - After 'The Umbrella', originally painted in oils on canvas in 1883 by Marie Bashkirtseff

1 June 2022 - from the portrait of Emperor Maximilian I, originally painted by Bernhard Strigel sometime after 1508 

2 June 2022 - from the portrait of Ivan Morozov, originally painted by Valentin Serov in 1910

11 June 2022 - from the Portrait of a Lady in Red, painted in oils on panel by Jacopo Pontormo sometime between 1532–1535 

17 June 2022 - from the self portrait by María Izquierdo, painted in 1946 

23 June 2022 - From the portrait of Saint Rose of Lima, originally painted in oils on canvas by Carlo Dolci, sometime between 1586-1617

30 June 2022 - After ‘A Sudanese Man’, originally painted in oils on panel around 1886 by Rudolf Swoboda

7 July 2022 - From the portrait of Clara Serena Rubens, painted around 1616 in oils on panel by her father, Peter Paul Rubens

14 July 2022 - From the portrait of Margret Halseber of Basel, originally painted in oils on panel by William Key around 1808

22 July 2022 - From Mitsuuji with Mountain Roses, by Utagawa Kunisada (Toyokuni Ⅲ), mid-to-late 1830s 

29 July 2022 - From the Portrait of Eugenia Primavesi, originally painted in oil on canvas in 1913 by Gustav Klimt

Wow... there were a LOT of these!? Not sure why I never got around to sharing them, here, on the blog before now. I'll try to post them more regularly... 

To see more of the stuff I post on Twitter you can find me here:

twitter.com/timinsaskatoon

Shoggoth Got Eyez

 

Soggoth Got Eyez - 28cmx35cm (11x14) - Acrylic Ink and Gouache on Watercolour Paper

it seemed like a thing that needed to be done today. 

I have no further explanation.

Portraits of Amanda (and others)

 I've been wanting to do more figurative/portrait work. I've done a few of Amandax over the last month or so - mostly while sitting and watching Netflix.... 

Most of these are in a tiny 6"x6" watercolour sketchbook. I find it really too small for what I like doing... but I started it, I'll be damned if I just not FINISH filling the sketchbook. I'd actually started it a little over a year ago, in March, 50 days before Amanda's 50th birthday. I thought I'd do a drawing of her each day until she turned 50. I thought I'd try and do a drawing of her doing different things, but as it turned out - while working from home during a pandemic, there WEREN'T a lot of different things she was doing - stand at workstation doing work most of the day, then sit and watch Netflix in the evening... It lasted three days. I missed day four and, as with most things, once I miss ONE DAY, I just lose all momentum and interest in a project. 

26 February 2022... watching... SOMETHING...?!

4 March 2022 - This was at her At-Home-Work-Station... not sure if she was working from home that day or just decided to do MORE work when she got home from work...? I do recall it was later in the day.

18 March 2022 - Watching Bad Vegan on Netflix. The week before we'd watched the Tinder Swindler. She's not picking her nose. I'm not sure WHAT she was doing - self-facial-massage, perhaps? 

Not sure what day, but we were watching Lucifer with Finnegan. We're still watching it. I think this was during the first season. There are SIX. WE thought we'd give it one season to see if it was any good. Of course one season in and we felt like we needed to see it through - to see if it got any better!? I don't HATE the series... but I don't LOVE it either. It often seems like tired mish-mash of tropes and plots from so many other series we've already seen... Yet we keep watching it... 

Watching Brigerton Season Two. Didn't like this season as much as I'd liked the first. I really loved the new characters and some of the plot threads, but overall the season kind of fell flat for me. Kind of felt like a two hour movie that was padded out to fill out an 8 episode season!? 

28 March 2022 - this one was done in a different, slightly larger (8"x8") sketchbook while we were at an appointment on Monday. 

Watching Netflix again... probably Lucifer...? 

1 April 2022 - Amanda attending an online yoga teacher training thingie that she started Friday evening and did all weekend. 

Also did a quick drawing of Finnegan one day doing his school work... also in a different Sketchbook. 

Below are some of the other drawing in the small sketchbook of Amanda... 

2 March 2021 - I don't think she was watching a yoga video... I think it was a work-related zoom seminar or similar...? She just decided to do some yoga while watching it... because she COULD!? 

3 March 2021 - Amanda at her standing, at home work station. computer monitor stacked up on sheafs of printer paper to get it to the right height! 

 4 March 2021 -  The beginning of the sketching while watching Netflix, apparently. we were watching She-Ra and the Princess of Power. The whole family ended up watching the entire series. Mostly. 

June 2021 - Last summer Keiran and Amanda binge-watched the entire series of Glee! I watched a lot, but not all of it. Keiran LOVED it. It was fun. It had it's moments. I got a little tired of it after a few seasons.. 

I really need to try drawing Amanda from the OTHER side... and... maybe some MORE people!? 

The Early Sketchbooks

To start this look at the sketchbooks I have owned through the ages, here are two of the earliest ones I still have... 

The earliest sketchbooks I have are from high school. One is actually dated 1987 (which, in the fall, when I’m pretty sure I was drawing in it, would have been the beginning of grade 10). The last drawings in the other would have been the summer before grade ten… because there are a number of drawings from a Scout Jamboree I attended that summer. 

This Earlier of the two is a coil-bound, soft cover, 5.5x8.5” Grumbacher “All-Technique” medium weight white drawing paper sketchbook (“for ink, charcoal, pastel, pencil”). It has a lot of drawings done with charcoal (probably because, at the time, I thought it more “artistic” than pencil…). There are also a few with chalk pastel colour.

The last drawings in the book are from the summer of 1987 during the North Saskatchewan Region Scout Jamboree. Although there are some drawings that make me think I had this much, much earlier and there was a break between the earlier drawings in the book and the later ones.

These first couple were pictures likely copied from game books – Dungeons and Dragons Oriental Adventures, perhaps? Ninja I was all about Ninjas and Sanurai in the mid-eighties…

I think this might actually be a drawing of my mom…?

Here’s why I’m thinking this book may have been started in 1986 (or earlier!?) This would have been from a Grade 8 class trip to Blackstrap – a local ski hill.

I would have also been playing Dungeons and Dragons Oriental Adventures with my friend David around 1985-1986…

The rest I’m pretty sure are from the Jamboree in 1987

My old green tent… Though I’m not sure whose legs those would be. I’m pretty sure I was tenting alone that year… Maybe they’re my own imagined legs… Or maybe I was sharing a tent with some one and just forgot…

Or maybe that was Schwanke’s tent…? Maybe he had a green one too…?

Sunset over Anglin lake. I probably didn’t finish it because I was being eaten alive by mosquitoes…

An extremely rare full-colour drawing. Of all the sketchbooks, over all the years, I think this may be the only full-colour drawing I’ve ever done in a sketchbook!

Another exceedingly rare early cartoony self-portrait (with not-so-rare idiotic poor spelling!?)… the beginning, perhaps, of my auto-bio comics.

It rained a lot that week at the jamboree. I was standing on a stage (pictured in another drawing below) along with Calvin and Shannon. Water had pooled in the tarp over the stage and Shannon decided to use a stick to push up the tarp and drain the water. Unfortunately, instead of it going over the side closest, where she anticipated it would, it quickly ran down to the side edge and poured all over me…

Entrance to the campground

Said stage… I’m pretty sure the figure in the middle wearing a sweater is Shannon.

A Tipi – I think Shannon was sleeping in it…

The Smaller one (4”x6” hardcover “Signature Edition Classic Sketch Book”) is filled mostly with sketches of my classmates I did during classes. I tended to sit to the right rear of classrooms – where no one would see me looking at them and drawing pictures of them. Consequently there are a LOT of drawing of the back of peoples heads?! Some of them I’d written down, on the back of the page, who they were – but most I don’t need to look, I actually remember who they were, for some reason (are the drawings that good!?). Others I didn’t write down, mostly because they were so awful I didn’t ever want anyone to discover the book and look at one of the poorly drawn pictures with someone’s name attached to it and think “That’s supposed to be [insert name of victim here]?!” Even now I am feeling reluctant to put names to any of these. What am I worried about, though – like anyone I knew from high school that might know any of these people would ever be looking at this blog!?

They were all drawn very quickly – almost gesture like drawings – probably because I was horrified someone might notice me drawing pictures of them.. or the teacher might notice me drawing pictures of my classmates when I should really have been doing something else… A lot seem to be of people reading . I think these might have been during a reading period at the beginning of some English (or “Language Arts” classes). 


While the pages are small, the drawing and tinier still - taking up only a small section in teh center of the page (much like how my own kids draw now... maybe I shouldn't hassle them so much to try and use more of the page... They'll get there...). Unlike the previous book, which was almost all done with charcoal pencil, these were almost all done with lead (well... graphite) pencils...

Joel

Jodi

Claire

Warren, one of the few that was actually a friend.

David

A rare picture of one of my teachers. Of the dozens of drawings in teh little book only two were of teachers. This, I think, was Mr. Parsons, my grade 10 geometry teacher. I actually liked geometry.

My beloved Converse All-Stars. They were red.

Kieran. Not a classmate – apparently I took this book along to Youth Parliament.

Warren again.

Erin

Erin again.

I know I had another sketchbook around the same time – 1985-ish… it was a bigger one – probably 9”x12”. I think, for some reason, I gave (or threw) it away… Either way it's long, long gone. 

The thing I really like about sketchbooks is they’re a bit easier to hold onto. So much work has gone into them, it’s hard to say “bah, I don’t need to hold on to this picture” and just throw it out – like I’ve done with so, so many individual drawing and paintings. Some of the earliest records of my artistic endeavors are contained within these sketch books - not my earliest drawings - just the earliest that remain. 

Easier to store too – they can be stood up on a shelf like any other book…

It’s probably why I encourage my own kids to draw stuff in sketchbooks rather than on loose individual pages.