Passing the Time

I’m going to admit something maybe a little naughty right now. One of the things I was most looking forward to about the whole New York trip was the plane ride so that I could spend time drawing. It has been a long and busy several weeks into the semester already and that means that I’ve been not getting as regular drawing practice in as I’d like. So the airline downtime (blogged about here and here) is actually rather a welcome activity since I can bring out the sketchbook and draw. I’ve been regularly requiring myself to work directly in ink, so this means no correction of mistakes as one goes along. To proceed in drawing, you incorporate poor decisions about lines you’ve made into the drawing if you can, and move on. It also means that you learn to look more closely and think a bit more about line choices, and what you’re trying to capture.

Anyway, this fellow was sitting on a hydrant on one of the streets bordering Washington Square park, in the Village, and I liked something about his attitude, so I decided he’d be one of my plane subjects (I’m more or less drawn the all faces I wanted to in the in-flight magazine – see e.g., here and here for more on that) so I moved away and then turned and grabbed him using the telephoto. On the flight I put him on the ipad and drew him from that, using a micron pen in my notebook (I’d planned to put some watercolour on him, but did not do it in the end – I did not like the light I had on the plane).

-cvj