Goodbye Blue Mondays

Some Geese, Charles River
blue chalk
14 Jan 2013

The Pleasant Street Bridge
blue chalk
14 Jan 2013

Some mornings I just need to get out of the house and go to the South Natick dam to think, or not-think: whatever is most needed. I always take my sketchbook of course and I frequently grab my pencil case that is full to bursting with a revolving cast of crayons, pencils, sticks of charcoal and pens. Sometimes I stuff a bottle of ink --of indeterminate parentage and a few paintbrushes into that pencil case.

They say it's good to have options. If the muse has a prior commitment as I stare down the subject at hand sometimes a new tool helps the work get started more congenially. Today, instead of the usual cornucopia, I only took two items: a stubby black litho pencil that stayed in my pocket, and a piece of blue chalk. Chalk: the kind used to draw on the sidewalk or on a blackboard. The muse brooded, showed her wares and I did her bidding without too much dithering or chit-chat. These two quick drawings are the result of this collaboration.

Variety IS the spice of life and I see now as I tidy up this blog post, that the sun has emerged.

Have a good and productive week friends!

That Blue Pencil

The South Natick Dam
01-02-2012
colored pencil

A few years ago, I took part in a focus group to evaluate colored pencils. I received a set of anonymous pencils and got down to work. They were all different colors varied greatly in quality. I got to keep the pencils but it did take a lot of time to answer the tedious online questionnaires. This drawing is done with a hard, chalky blue pencil. I wouldn't recommend it to any serious professional.

I like my art supplies to have personality …or, I like to assume that they have personality. Any type of personality is okay. This particular pencil is hard and alternately waxy & chalky, and a gritty light blue color. Draw just normally and it barely deposits material on the paper. Bear down and you might just burnish the paper or it might lay down a skid mark of this blue color. It makes my shading and line unpredictable --which I like.

When I buy paper, I try to buy a bunch, stash it away and forget that I have it. I gobble up paints and inks that are on sale and past their "sell date". I love picking up stuff at yard sales that have unknown provenience. The paint might need to be resuscitated. Will the paper fade and yellow? Is it unprofessional to make art out of materials that are so untrustworthy? Maybe, in this internet age where artwork is scanned and archived as soon as it is painted, using scurrilous materials is sort of excusable. This "fast living" helps me make a lot of pictures and keeps me fresh and, I think, vital. My materials give me ideas and energy as they express their own irascible quirks. If I could have anything, I'd probably have a lot of expensive pigments and paper AND a lot of junky stuff too.

If you've read this far, it doesn't get any better. This question is a quandary for me.

The Sparrow

sketchbook spread: a drawing of a dead bird.
Sept. 23, 2011 colored pencil
© 2011 Rob Dunlavey

detail

On my walk home from the river yesterday, I found a dead sparrow on the side of the road. It had probably flown into the windshield of a passing car. Poor thing.

The sketchbook page had a few quick drawings of a heron I had drawn earlier. I'm working on a children's book that features a sparrow as one of the characters. You can find a few sketches of this character on my other illustration blog.

Brilliant and Bitter

Brilliant sun and bitter cold

"Spring is just around the corner" says the grim-faced coffee shop owner as I wipe the fog off my glasses and await my order of hot coffee. Whatever you say!
Good morning people! The sublimating snow is leaving fanciful lace-like spires and icicles. Sticks and stones are revealed like bones from a grotesque injury. We are half past the Hunger Moon and larger animals are very hungry now that winter is in its eleventh hour. But mockingbirds and robins have started to sing.
How can we be so grim when the sun shines so marvelously (although some would say mercilessly)?

12º F

The temperature was about 12º F (-11º C) this morning. With the frigid weather, the ice is creeping along to the very lip of the dam. Ducks have been congregating on top of the structure and have left tracks in the snow.
Drawn with a black litho crayon in my sketchbook.

After drawing the first picture, I warm up over a cup of coffee and returned to draw this observation of the snow-covered water with a pair of dog or coyote tracks. It's bitter cold; the sky is totally blue and the shadows of the trees are a deep blue. I drew this with a blue china marker.

Winter Drawing

The South Natick Dam | 7 Dec. 2010 | colored pencil

There's just a bit of ice on the fringes of the river above the dam. Icicles have formed where water leaks from the surface down through the arches of the bridge. I've seen an occasional goose or two swimming in lazy circles above the dam. No herons to speak of and just an occasional group of ducks heading somewhere else high overhead.
I promise though that I will make some snowbound sketches as soon as we get an accumulation.
There were a few flurries last night and it was cold enough that I saw the evidence this morning as I walked Ellen to her bus stop.
Life moves too fast wouldn't you say?

Water over the dam

The South Natick Dam

10-14-10

My other blogging platform has been going through some growing pains this week (it will be downsized over the course of the coming year) and it's been interesting (sobering and occasionally amusing) to observe the reactions of my fellow blogging illustrators and the public who wander in from time to time. Things are settling down for the meantime and posting will continue with an added dash of irony or urgency perhaps. If you to visit you'll catch a glimpse of how some visual communicators think or act. You can draw your own conclusions though. These are the people who boil those thousands of words down to the proverbial "one picture".