I’m working on a sketch that turned into a watercolor piece in a sketchbook. There was this page in the sketchbook that I had forgotten about:
It’s my hand wrapped around the sketchbook. Abstract. Colorful, huh? I just love how free and fluid painting like this can be. And it’s just in some obscure sketchbook, so it doesn’t matter if it’s gallery quality. Nah!
Not very creative lately, but going through some old notebooks at work, I found a few things I thought might be interesting to look at later on:
Doodle during OSHA training
More OSHA doodling
Quick sketch of the conference phone sitting in the middle of the table during a meeting at work
Sketch of an idea I had to catch some wire trimmings that were messing up the floor (current on left, proposed on right)
There, that should do for a bit. I’ll get back to doing more interesting things (I hope). Meanwhile, you can see into my mind a bit.
I have about five or six spiral-bound notebooks that I’ve held on to for a number of years now. Every once in a while I’ll find myself in need of a notebook, and one of these five or six is always within arms reach. They’re constant companions of mine when I go to meetings. I’m NEVER in a meeting without one!
And this is why… I’m usually BORED…TO…TEARS! And when I’m bored, I doodle. The longer the meeting, the more doodles there are, or the more complicated/intricate the doodle is.
Just the other day, I was in the car and in need of something to write on. I looked in the glove box and found a notebook from about three years ago. The first three pages had doodles on them. Here they are…
From a "Monday Morning Management Meeting" on Monday, December 8th, 2008. Obviously, nothing exciting happened in THAT meeting.
Also from the M.M.M.Meeting. Apparently this meeting lasted about the same time as the one the week before. 
Same notebook, but I was waiting in the car for my wife while she had an appointment. After a while I got bored enough with the radio that I pulled out the notebook from the glove box and started sketching the building she was in. Not much later, out she came, so that was the end of the drawing session.
There ya go. A snapshot into 10-day period of my life. A lot’s changed since then… A LOT!, but isn’t it cool to look back every once in a while?
Here’s some other posts where I’ve been bored enough at work to doodle.
Added some color to the “doodle” from yesterday. Who knows where this is going.
I doodle a heckuva lot more than I draw and paint. And I NEVER doodle in my sketchbook, which is EXACTLY where all this kind of thing should happen. I’ve mentioned it before, but there’s this phobia I have of putting something in a sketchbook, or on a blank piece of paper, or on a canvas, and messing it up. Regular ol’ notebook paper, napkins, cardboard, business cards? No problem at all. I’ll just drop ink and graphite all over the damned place. That’s what this was…
This is a scanned version, and if you look carefully enough you can see the faintest hints of the lines in the paper. It was drawn on a 8 1/2″ x 11″ canary legal pad, but I scanned it in black-and-white, then erased as much of the lines as I could with Sketchbook Pro.
Anyway, what I should do is do more of this in the Moleskine sketchbook. Gotta conquer my fear of dorkin’ up a page in that damned notebook. Heaven help me!
I haven’t done anything in a long while now, and forced myself into doing this:
Calle de la Vele
It’s a miserable representation of a remarkable photo taken from an iPhone camera by Neal Boortz while on his recent European vacation. One day, maybe I’ll be able to take Kelly. Loved the pictures he tweeted. Here’s the one that provided the inspiration for this.
It’s in my sketchbook, so it won’t be matted and framed. Thanks, Neal, for the inspiration, anyway. The photos were great. Jealous!
My lovely wife got me a couple neat-o things for Christmas that have helped release some of my inhibitions. A blank piece of paper, or canvas, just intimidates the hell out of me. So much so, that I have trouble even sketching in my sketchbooks. I’m afraid of messing something up. It’s not seriously neurotic, but it is limiting.
I have now been unleashed, so to speak, because of a graphic tablet. It’s the Wacom Bamboo. Not terribly expensive, either. Plus, it doubles as a multi-touch mouse pad, which is cool as all get out. She also got me Autodesk’s Sketchbook Pro 2011. Awesome program! Put the two together, and I can draw, paint, erase, airbrush, whatever, and if I don’t like it, dump it all with a click of the “DELETE” key.
So, I haven’t done much, and most of what I have done has been trashed. Here are just two sketches I did with a few spare minutes during lunch at work. Nothing fancy, but you can start to see how fun this must be.
So I had the incredible urge to paint today, and inspiration… well, inspiration was lacking a bit. Funny how those two, urge and inspiration, rarely appear together for me. I fumbled around the office for a few minutes – the lunch hour was quickly slipping by – and I found this black-and-white photo I’d doctored up of a guy I work with, Michael. I enhanced it for contrast so that there wasn’t too much in the way of shades of grey. Anyway, I thought I could do that in under an hour in the ol’ Moleskine. My watercolor set doesn’t have black, so I went with the darkest color I had… brown. Hell, there may even be a technical name for it… OK, hold on, I’ll find out… ”burnt umber”. Of course! Why shouldn’t I have known that?
So here it is, one simple, monochrome portrait of Michael. (He doesn’t even know I’ve done this… shhhh…)
"Michael": Watercolor in Moleskine
Another page from the latest sketchbook. I thought maybe at one point that this would be something I’d want to do a painting a day in, but… it just ain’t gonna happen. Not saying that nothing remarkable happened this weekend, because I was home, which was WONDERFUL, and what may be mundane to some, home life is certainly not mundane for me. I love being with my family! And especially this time of year.
So, what did happen this weekend was that we decorated the tree. Honestly, I did nothing in the way of decorating. Actually, Kelly did it all. I was in charge of untangling the hooks for hanging ornaments with. We put them into ziploc baggies and they’re a tangled mess by the time we break them out again.
The tree plumped up nicely after being released from the shackles of that fishnet plastic it came home in. And, boy is it thirsty! (On the side… since it’s been cut from it’s original root system, is it technically “dead”, or is the fact that I’m giving it water, and it’s still “drinking” allowing me to still call it “alive”?) Anyway, I circled that tree for at least five minutes looking for something to paint in this sketchbook. Nothing stuck out but this. I’m not finished with it, but I don’t really know if I’ll ever finish it. What the heck? It’s a SKETCHBOOK! I’m a damned nut! Stupid perfectionist. I swear!
We went to Hobby Lobby the other day and, while ostensibly there to find Christmas garland, you have to know I can’t go into a place like that without visiting the art section. Turns out there was a huge sale going on, as if that really mattered, and, lo and behold, I found a 5 1/2″ x 8″ Strathmore, 140lb watercolor sketchbook for a reasonable price. I have more sketchbooks and watercolor paper than I know what to do with. Hell, my Molskine sketchbook, which I should be using almost exclusively for “sketching”, is hardly ever being opened. What did I need this damned sketchbook for?
I found a reason. I was waiting around for a nurse to come to the house to take my blood and vitals for an insurance thingy, when this book spoke to me. ”Daily journal”, it whispered. OK, fine! I went with it. The photo below is the first page. Hardly a piece of art, huh? Well it’s expressive, and there’s a WHOLE lot of meaning behind what you see, which I won’t be delving into here. I’ll say this, however, then let your imagination run with it, cool? I have an ex-wife, and we have a daughter together. Each year since the divorce, we’ve pretty much ignored the court-ordered Christmas vacation visitation schedule and have instead opted for a series of back-and-forth negotiations that would make Hillary Clinton proud. It’s a bit more tense this year for other reasons… There. That’s all ya get. Now don’t ask, OK?
December
Alright. Now that was yesterday morning, and a full explanation is hand-written on the back. Maybe, once I’m dead and gone, and perhaps famous for something other than art (obviously), these pages will be on display, or fetch a handsome ransom, then donated to a high-dollar museum. In either case, maybe you’ll get the chance to get up close and read them and go, “Ahhh… I get it.” Until then… suffer. :)
Next, is the one from today.
The Third
Pretty cut-and-dried. What you see is the highlights from the day. Got blood drawn from my arm (so did our one-year-old by the way – another story), went to Cracker Barrel for dinner, got a Christmas tree, then had a glass of Merlot (Casillero de Diablo, if you must know). I haven’t got a clue what will be in there as a result of the events of today. As of yet, nothing remarkable has happened that I absolutely must draw. Whatever it is, don’t count on it being put up here sometime tomorrow. It’s the weekend, and it’s gonna be a full one.
Until next time. Ciao!
