July 26, 2011

     This is a small drawing - about five inches - of an even smaller toy. This toy dates back to the 1960s, is plastic, and bows and bobs when you push up on the base of the stand. Since I got a poodle pup for my seventh or so birthday, we were often given poodley things by friends and relatives.

May 20, 2011

    This is a pyjama puppy from the late 1950's/early 1960's. For those who don't know what a pyjama puppy (or pyjama elephant, pyjama kitten etc.) is, it's soft, not very stuffed, and has a zipper in the belly where you keep your pyjamas during the day. 
    I drew this one without lines. I mean, there are lines making up the shading, but there are no lines defining edges. In other words, I used shading to make areas of value and built the pup up that way rather than sketching it first and then modelling it with shading. If I had been using the side of my pencil or a carbon stick there would have been No lines. 
    I've been feeling like trying out some ways of drawing in a more painterly way, not necessarily because I would like the process or product better but because it would be an interesting exercise, and this is one attempt at one approach.

May 15, 2011

     Here's an unmarked wind up toy - possibly from about the late 1980's considering the "kid" it was gotten for - done in pen, in contour with some shading.

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. 

April 4, 2011

     We dug up this little (about one inch long) toy in the back yard while putting in a pump. It is some kind of metal, with no rust and no paint, and the top is yellow plastic with a fairly involved pale (faded) red plastic something up under the roof indicating something had once been attached there. It's a Mattel, but it must have been in the ground for at least 20 to 30 years given how long we've had this house and the age of the "youngster" who lived here before us. I wonder if it might have been a circus calliope.