“I know there is a terrific idea there somewhere…”

March 12, 2019

“I know there is a terrific idea there somewhere, but whenever I want to get into it, I get a feeling of apathy and want to lie down and go to sleep.” – Willem De Kooning

Feb 1, 2019

Feb 2, 2019

Feb 3, 2019

Feb 4, 2019

Feb 5, 2019

Feb 6, 2019

Feb 7, 2019

Feb 8, 2019

Feb 9, 2019

Feb 10, 2019

Feb 11 2019

Feb 12, 2019

Feb 13, 2019

Feb 14, 2019

Feb 15, 2019

Feb 16, 2019

Feb 17, 2019

Feb 18, 2019

Feb 19, 2019

Feb 20, 2019

Feb 21, 2019

Feb 22, 2019

Feb 23, 2019 A

Feb 23, 2019 B

Feb 24, 2019

Feb 25, 2019

Feb 26, 2019

Feb 27, 2019

Feb 28, 2019

I really enjoyed my drawings this month – there was a good balance between the challenge of each one and my interest in the subject matter. I’m sure I will be coming back to this subject matter again. The shapes of the negative space and the legs provide such a great opportunity to forget what this thing you’re looking at is and just focus on where to put the next line. For the most part, I worked from photos. I had set out to draw all of the chairs in my house and I did get to most of them – except for the four different office chairs that were just bland to me. And there are just so many beautifully designed chairs out there that it would have been such a loss to stick to the ones in my immediate surroundings. I am now finding myself noticing (and photographing) chairs much more as I am out – at restaurants and in the mall. I am slowly building a collection of new chairs to do this all over again down the road with new fodder.

Part of my inspiration for this subject matter comes from the work of Lucia Dill and her paintings of folding chairs. I love everything about these paintings and the narratives she builds into them.

And now it’s spring and I’m working on more drawings to post here next month.

“Don’t think. Thinking is the enemy of creativity…..”

February 17, 2019

“Don’t think. Thinking is the enemy of creativity. It’s self-conscious, and anything self-conscious is lousy. You can’t try to do things. You simply must do things.” – Ray Bradbury

Jan 1, 2019

Jan 2, 2019

Jan 3, 2019

Jan 4, 2019

Jan 5, 2019

Jan 6, 2019

Jan 7, 2019

Jan 8, 2019

Jan 9, 2019

Jan 10, 2019

Jan 11, 2019

Jan 12, 2019

Jan 13, 2019

Jan 14, 2019

Jan 15, 2019

Jan 16, 2019

Jan 17, 2019

Jan 18, 2019

Jan 19, 2019

Jan 20, 2019

Jan 21, 2019

Jan 22, 2019

Jan 23, 2019

Jan 24, 2019

Jan 25, 2019

Jan 26, 2019

Jan 27, 2019

Jan 29, 2019

Jan 30, 2019

Jan 31, 2019

This is my third year drawing every day. Having finished my first month, I took a bit of time last weekend to compare my drawings from January 2017 and January 2018 beside my January 2019 work. I had hoped to see huge advances in terms of the quality of my drawings – and I do see improvement, but not what I had hoped for. I found a lot of my drawings this past month a bit frustrating. Considering the shapes of the subject matter I was drawing (produce) consists of organic, often roundish shapes, I had thought I could do better to convey volume. It is what it is though. And I did experiment some with mediums which explains the less than stellar results of the drawings for Jan 14 and Jan 24. And there are some that I really like – Jan 9 and Jan 16. I am still going on this project and with a new theme for February I am looking forward to seeing the results.

“Canada is the only country in the world that knows how to live without an identity.” – Marshall McLuhan

January 28, 2019

Aug 27, 2018

Sep 6, 2018

Sep 25, 2018

Sep 29, 2018

Oct 2, 2018

Oct 14, 2018

Oct 26, 2018

Oct 27, 2018

Oct 28, 2018

Oct 29, 2018

Oct 30, 2018

Nov 8, 2018

Nov 9, 2018

These are a few drawings from my daily sketchbook from August through November. Somehow I’m able to play a little more when I’m drawing in my sketchbook and sometimes wonder if maybe I should just dispense with using the cut paper and just draw here – I may prefer the results. But I don’t want to be restricted to the same paper every day. It’s the looseness and the textures that I like the most in these particular drawings – I am still working on accomplishing that more frequently. And so I continue on.

“This world of the imagination is fancy-free and violently opposed to common sense.” – Mark Rothko

January 14, 2019

Quick Lemons, Nov 17, 2018, Oil on Canvas Board, 11″ X 14″

Favourites, Nov 24, 2018, Oil on Art Board, 10″ X 8″

Already Here, Dec 1, 2018, Oil on Evolon, 5″ x 7″ each

Ginger Boy Bitten, Dec 8, 2018, Oil on Arches Oil Paper, 8″ X 10″

Floating Reindeer, Dec 15, 2018, Oil on Arches Oil Paper, 8″ X 10″

In 2019 I want to paint more regularly. Last year I found I wasn’t interested a lot of the time and because I don’t get a lot of time to paint, it’s important that I take advantage of what I can do. My goal this year is to paint weekly on Friday nights. I will start the year by painting small paintings that are not that different from my daily drawings and I hope to complete a few larger canvases as well.

In the last few months, I have been painting smaller items. The good part is that they are finished quickly so if they are mediocre, at least the time investment was small. And sometimes they turn out not too badly. I’ve also started painting small abstract pieces to finish the evening. The images above are a mix of what has come out of my recent painting sessions.

“What we create is who we are, and who we are is what we create.” – Tobias van Schneider

December 31, 2018

Dec 1, 2018

Dec 2, 2018

Dec 3, 2018

Dec 4, 2018

Dec 5, 2018

Dec 6, 2018

Dec 7, 2018

Dec 8, 2018

Dec 9, 2018

Dec 10, 2018

Dec 11, 2018

Dec 12, 2018

Dec 13, 2018

Dec 14, 2018

Dec 15, 2018

Dec 16, 2018

Dec 17, 2018

Dec 18, 2018

Dec 19, 2018

Dec 20, 2018

Dec 21, 2018

Dec 22, 2018

Dec 23, 2018

Dec 24, 2018

Dec 25, 2018

Dec 26, 2018

Dec 27, 2018

Dec 28, 2018

Dec 29, 2018

Dec 30, 2018

Dec 31, 2018

Another year ending and another 365 daily drawings complete. My theme for my December drawings was Christmas and I pretty much stuck to drawing Christmas ornaments. I had started with the intention of incorporating either red or green on every drawing, but I missed a few days along the way and kind of stopped caring with the rush of the holidays. I was trying to use up the paper that I had prepared earlier so I was using grey paper quite frequently. It’s kind of ridiculous that even though I don’t love working with it, I continue to buy it. I now have two different types of grey paper, a book of Kraft and a book of blue-toned paper. Clearly I need to find a medium that I like to work with on toned paper once I get it out of the store.

Reviewing the drawings of the past year, I feel like I have improved my skills. I wish could say that I’ve improved dramatically, but I don’t really feel that’s the case. I have enjoyed some of the themes that I have worked with and I had a lot of fun trying new things – even when the results were questionable. My goal this past year (besides to improve my skills) were to work with a variety of mediums on a variety of papers. I have done that and am pleased with the result.

I’ve been thinking about how I will continue this project In 2019. Here are some notes on what I’ve come up with:

Continue to use a small format – approximately 5.5″ by 8″
No more black border on each drawing
Stick to a few papers that I like
Maybe more focus on developing my skills with particular mediums – still thinking about this
Definitely more themes – probably one each month
Definitely repeat some of the themes I have done in the past two years
Possibly play with pattern and abstract stuff some months
Possibly play with more fun approaches that don’t involve drawing from observation
Definitely push myself out of my comfort zone (more faces? Maybe landscapes??)
Continue to start each drawing session with quick sketches or drawing exercises in my sketchbook
Continue to post my drawings to Instagram each day
Add a second image to each daily Instagram post showing the materials I used for the drawing
Possibly write a bit more here about my process/approach to drawing and my thoughts about materials
Possibly complete a painting some days instead of a drawing

I’m looking forward to a new year of drawings.

“Boredom is the deadliest poison.” – William F. Buckley, Jr.

Nov 1, 2018

Nov 1b, 2018

Nov 2, 2018

Nov 3, 2018

Nov 4, 2018

Nov 5, 2018

Nov 6, 2018

Nov 7, 2018

Nov 8, 2018

Nov 9, 2018

Nov 10, 2018

Nov 11, 2018

Nov 12, 2018

Nov 13, 2018

Nov 14, 2018

Nov 15, 2018

Nov 16, 2018

Nov 17, 2018

Nov 18, 2018

Nov 19, 2018

Nov 20, 2018

Nov 21, 2018

Nov 22, 2018

Nov 23, 2018

Nov 24, 2018

Nov 25, 2018

Nov 26, 2018

Nov 27, 2018

Nov 28, 2018

Nov 29, 2018

Nov 30, 2018

So at the end of October, I was really sick of drawing every day and I considered stopping. I was uninspired and it felt like a huge chore to continue. But I’ve been doing this for almost two full years now and didn’t want to give up either. I decided to focus on value and I started the month using markers representing a light, a mid and a dark value. This only lasted a couple of days, but it gave me the idea to start playing with value and simplified shapes. I continued to limit myself to three and then two colours and by the end, I actually enjoyed the drawing process again. As usual, through the month I worked with a few different papers and am including some notes about some of them along with a couple of things I learned along the way.

Nov 15 – 16 – Arches BFK Rives – Really not my favourite paper. It is very soft to the touch and somewhat delicate. Erasing takes a bit of the surface off and I found my ink colours bleeding at times – not what I was looking for.
Nov 17 – Yupo – Another paper I don’t like. I hear people rave about what you can do with watercolours on this material, but I am not a fan. I learned that if you erase pencil on Yupo, it then resists ink. My ink colours also faded very quickly.
Nov 21 – 26, and Nov 28 -30 – TerraSkin – I liked the TerraSkin, even though I found my colours would bleed at times. I found pencil does not erase after the ink has been applied on TerraSkin and that was annoying. I discovered that Liquitex Muted Turquoise (Nov 28) is the same colour as Dr. Ph Martin’s Juniper Green (Nov 29), but the brush strokes don’t show as much with the Ph Martin’s on the TerraSkin. Really liked the way the Ecoline inks smoothed out on the surface and the brushstrokes disappeared on the TerraSkin.