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.