Sketch A Day 2011: chop

The purpose of a sketch a day is just to do it - sketch! It doesn't matter if it is an involved sketch or if it is a simple contour or gesture drawing. There are no rules except to sketch each day.

Life parameters can dictate the time investment, but a sketch a day commitment is designed to elevate the personal priority of sketching ... to enforce sketching. Making it into a "resolution" validates the activity (invests it with a bit of a challenge even!) and defends against competing demands. The sketch a day is designed for practice - to reinforce basic skills, and to provide daily contemplation on the issues of two dimensional representation.

Several of us are doing a sketch a day, and I would enjoy hearing from anyone else who decides to join in. We share our efforts, support each other, keep each other honest and... hopefully we'll have some fun doing this!

Click on any of the sketches to enlarge...
and don't forget to check out older posts!

Showing posts with label chop. Show all posts

Tuesday, May 3, 2011

April 28, 2011

This is a marble "chop" my father picked up in Shanghai, China during World War II. There was a small shop that took down your name and carved it into the bottom of a chop you chose, used the chop to make the mark (shown) on a bit of red (of course) paper, and taped it to the side as the label.
My father's name is C. Johnson, but when he showed the chop to one of the Chinese men in Happy Valley where he was assigned, he was told the chop said something more equivalent to "John C Son"... and that it would have been the interpretation since they would have said the last name first in giving it to the shop owner, but put it in the middle on the chop (I think I have the story correct). That seems strange, until you consider how we monogram towels and so on (which has always seemed strange to me too!)...