December 30, 2011

    Okay - one day away from having posted all year, and I'm running low on ideas... besides, the television, magazines, papers etc. are all about rehashing the year. So why not? I decided I'd take a look at the things people who visited this sketch blog were searching for when they ran across it, and choose one of the strangest (and some search terms are pretty strange...). 
    The search term I thought was oddest and also drawable ("dog dog gold" not being very drawable, for example) was "dog walking a frog". Okay, here's a frog out walking his pup.

October 17, 2011

      This is my completed drawing of a Grey Tree Frog sitting on a magnolia leaf. Grey Tree Frog is really their name, as unimaginative as it sounds. I would have named this kind a Lichen Frog, since they come in grey and grey-green, and really seem to be imitating the lichen found on rocks and trees. Besides, lichen is a lovely sounding word. 
    This graphite B2 and B4 drawing was done from a photo taken of a young frog I found in my back yard. Sitting like this, with his feet tucked tightly in under himself, the other thing I took him for just at first was a strange fungus on the leaf.
    For me, drawing the fuzzier, more out-of-focus things that are very near or very far is more difficult. Drawing a whole lot of nothing (because there is nothing defined as any given identifiable object) and making it seem like it might be something if you could just see it better is also difficult. I think that even though you'd expect that any old fuzzy doodle would do, the human eye-brain duo actually expects certain typical shapes, and probably more importantly, has scale expectations that must not be violated or else things start to jump out at you as just wrong!
    

October 16, 2011

     For one thing, I was behind one day in my sketches, for another, I ended up deciding to put in a bit more (fuzzy) background... so I figured I would just count this drawing as two days' worth. Usually though, when I do that I put up the first day's drawing instalment then the next day I put up the finished drawing. Well, I'm not done yet but this is a bit more than the first day so I cut out background and am posting just the little frog now, and hopefully will post the background too - the finished drawing - before the night is out.

July 18, 2011

Last night I doodled a black and white doodle... just for a change-up. 

April 17, 2011

    It's a froggy time of year. Walking my dog in the park today, I could hear frogs and the plopping of frogs into the water, but nary a frog did I see. When I got home I saw this plastic frog my kids had when they were little. In recent years, we put it near our little pond to confuse the real frogs that live there. 
    I started off with a pen I used to like, but discovered it must be running out of ink since it would not do anything but the firmest mark without skipping. Of course, I should have found another pen that matched or started over, but I found that it was actually a bit of an interesting exercise to sketch the plastic frog with all firm marks. How's that for rationalising just "making do"? Unfortunately, I can see the pen also made a few blot-marks on it's own initiative; it really is due for the trash. I added a bug and lily and pad just for fun.