More walking. Gimme two weeks, I figure I'll have something worth looking at it by then.

Running tally: 200 gesture drawings this week. 2/3 there!

It's gonna be all right

More mallstuff today, trying to capture people walking. Not great results yet, but I think I'm going to stick with this a bit, really try to get that motion down. I figure a couple of weeks of this, I'll start to get a rudimentary grasp of it, and I can go from there.

No gestures today, way too tired. Should still manage the 300 target I've set for the week, though.

Every single day of my life

Another page of mall sketches. Gonna try over near the transit escalators tomorrow, try to get people walking. I need more practice on capturing that sort of motion.

Running tally: 150 gestures so far this week. Halfway there!

Take as directed

Last summer I was so proud of having done over 300 gesture drawings.

This summer I'm gonna do it in a week. Yesterday and today, I'm a third of the way there already.

Here are the last three pages from today's session, to give a snapshot of where I'm at right now.

If you want me to, I will

Two posts today, so look out!

First is my usual on-location sketching. I had a day off on Monday, so I need to get back in practice. Not too bad though, I feel like I'm catching the scent of something.

Sepia Coloured World

I've always wanted to draw like this. I still need practice.

Dorothy Parker made you feel like summer

Seriously, I'd call this one a success. Sakura brush pen and Prismacolor sepia chisel tip marker on a printout of this sketch. Never done anything like this before, pretty good for going on instinct.

Waiters Gotta Wait

Forgot to upload this yesterday. More later.

Exotic and Insane

Working at the hospital today instead of the satellite office, which is good for the art since they have a really good cafeteria on site. Which means loads of good sight lines for drawing.

Certainly beats being bored in a basement.

Drawing at the....Tim's

So for various reasons I couldn't hang at the mall again, so I hung at the local Tim's instead. That's livin' the high life, baby!

Turned out to be a mistake though, since that particular Tim's has terrible sight lines, so it was pretty much impossible to see anyone at the counter below the mid-back. But I managed well enough in the end, I guess.

Drawing in the Mall: Day Six

On and on I go! Highlights of today include starting the first of my home-made sketchbooks (thus the pages showing through, this one's just printer paper), the realization that this whole exercise is becoming less difficult and more fun than before (although drawing quality hasn't really improved much), and an amusing moment where I heard a woman's voice nearby saying "Look at what she's doing," clearly referring to me. Altogether, a pretty positive experience.

I'm thinking of doing some experimenting with stuff this weekend, but I'll leave that off until then. You'll see what I mean if I do it.

Drawing in the Mall: Day Five

Pretty productive day, and more successes than before, although there's still some godawful crap in there. That said, I think I'm starting to understand the difference between the ones that work and the ones that don't. The working ones are the simplest, where I did the least trying. It should be no surprise to anyone that knows me that I think and analyze myself too much, and this really underlines the value of letting that go and letting instinct do the work.

If I can really get a handle on that, the entire summer's worth of drawing will have paid off.

Drawing in the Mall: Day Four

Apparently Tim Horton's is a great place to find people more or less standing still long enough to sketch. Who knew?

Next weekend should be a great time to go to Rideau Centre and draw all the people at the OC Transpo kiosk.

This makes two hours I've put in on ballpoint drawings in the field. By my calculations, I just need to do this 1000 more times, and I'll be reasonably good at it.

Drawing in the Mall: Day Three

There's something about drawing in a public place, nice mood music playing in your earphones (Jean-Michel Jarre's Equinoxe, in this case) that puts you in an interesting state of mind afterwards. I did my usual half-hour today, which was fairly productive as you can see, and afterwards it struck me as I walked to the bus that I was noticing the people around me more than I normally would, and in a strangely detached way.

The almost haughty look of the woman at the cosmetics counter. Her co-worker, discreetly rubbing her nose with a surprisingly polished motion. The emphatic man trying to interest passersby in skin cream. People browsing, with different attitudes and postures. The one woman, dressed in white, whose bust seemed oddly disproportionate to her slim frame, hunching forward as if being pulled along by breasts that didn't truly belong to her. Altogether a fascinating and strange parade of fascinating and strange humanity.

That alone makes it worth the trip, I think.