Return to the Meer

I’ve been quiet for a few months because I’ve been getting up to speed on a new job.  A few months of homework are now abating and I’ve returned, like The Spring, to Central park.  There have been three days of sketching in the last two weeks.  Plus the grip of jury duty which saw me drawing fellow prospective jurists for a couple of days.  It was a sea of people in hoodies staring at handheld objects.

I’m only posting one image.  In part because it’s the best, but specifically because it’s another watershed moment.  I’ll just post it then shall I?  ok:

 

So it’s spots and lines still?  What’s the big deal?  Well, this comes from a short day last Sunday… I made a couple of quick drawings at the end of a strong week while waiting for a date to pick me up at Central Park.  I’d recently seen some posts about a Plein Air convention out West where there was some discussion about how to draw foliage.  One of the online comments was about massing the values and not specifically worrying about the shapes.  In the eight months, give or take, I’ve been drawing at the park I’ve been locked into LINE; and venturing into value.  Towards the end of last season, I was working more on composition of the picture area and composure of the elements within.

This recent development might be the most painterly yet.  It seems like just-another-thing but in many ways it’s the beginning of Phase 2 in the plein air sketches.  The drawings have recovered from dormancy and now will just “improve”.  Trust me, there’s a life time of improvement that can be made.  But at present, I’m in a groove and it’s less about vaguely “getting there” than it is about making it good.

I don’t know.  Maybe it just looks the same to everybody else.  🙂

You’ll see in the ink drawing (though it’s evident in the pencil drawings below) that I’m hammering in bulky shapes.

As an aside, I should mention that while drawing at the Meer last week that I got approached by NBC’s morning show news crew for the Today Show.  I got briefly interviewed by the reporter because an invasive predator species of fish: the Snakehead Fish.  I’d read about the animal a few years ago.  So i was a prime interviewee.  The reporter asked me, “well, you don’t seem very concerned.” To which I replied, “I’m a New Yorker.  We panic on the inside.”

Unfortunately, my clip wasn’t used.  Clearly the nefarious input by snakehead fish sympathizers at NBC.  Loch Hiss marches onward!