These dogs have such wonderful wrinkles, luscious almost, like a rose in furry form. Since my sketching group has a side project of filling a small drawing book with animals, I thought I’d try a Sharpei. This is not a live sketch since I don’t know any actual Sharpei, so I drew this from a photo. 
I don’t know if it’s the paper, but the pencils seemed especially unwieldy tonight, and the difference between the 4H and the 2H was more dramatic than usual. Maybe it’s because of the moisture (it’s raining) in the air.
“I am too old to die young, and too young to grow up.” — He said this a week before he died. I thought he was a great complement to Gene Wilder in Young Frankenstein, a fun movie. This was made using 5 pencils, here’s the progression: http://youtu.be/g5JvmYP4kec
Read more about Marty Feldman here http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001204/bio
Marty Feldman, actor
The medium was way too small for such a challenging face, at 5×7 inches, and the actual sketch ended up 3.5 x 4 inches. I’d better keep my pencils sharp next time! Buffy Sainte-Marie, probably in the last 7 years…
I am hoping to get going on this project of drawing faces again. This was a 2-hour sketch, and is from an old photo of Grace Slick.
What was so inspiring about Steve Jobs was his dedication to quality, to inclusiveness, to integration of human efforts, be they mechanical, digital, or theoretical. He was such a genius at putting these things together, for art, for science, for everyday people, within the everyday world. He created a business model which superseded the normal, negative one that we see all around us every day. He created groups which worked together. He didn’t take no for an answer when he asked for something that worked—not just adequately, not just barely, not just within a budget, but really WORKED.
What do I mean by “worked”? I mean that it pulled from our emotional intelligence, from our knowledge, and also what is yet to be discovered. Without the acknowledging this large universe of potential his computers would have been just products.
“Most people make the mistake of thinking design is what it looks like, People think it’s this veneer, that the designers are handed this box and told, ‘Make it look good!’ That’s not what we think design is. It’s not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.”
—Steve Jobs
I regret his positive insight and pickiness will no longer inform our future direction.
face 43
I started this as a joke, wanting to make it into an updated Carmen-Miranda sort of thing, with glass gooseberries scattered around like jewels, but this is as far as I got…
I was going to keep going with this until it was fully shaded, but I liked the paleness of it, which may not come accross too well on a computer screen, but the way it almost seems to resolve out of the paper. I like how you have to actually work at it a little, it doesn’t just push it’s way into your view. So, I think it’s finished. I might add a little more to his hair.
On the cover of an old book of his short plays there was a great photo of the author, Samuel Beckett, as an older man. He had an acute, almost pained look. I didn’t quite capture it, and the drawing is small, but it was fun trying. I extended his hair at the top, he didn’t really have that tall of a coiff! (sp)
The iPad is fun, but it’s still a lot easier to get good detail with pencils, maybe later I’ll get better at it. The cap will have to remain unfinished…on to the next one!
I don’t know if it’s the paper, but the pencils seemed especially unwieldy tonight, and the difference between the 4H and the 2H was more dramatic than usual. Maybe it’s because of the moisture (it’s raining) in the air.
