First Long School Meeting of the Semester

The School of the Arts had it's first long...and I mean long...like three hours long...meeting yesterday morning. I hate meetings of any length. It is probably why I don't belong to any clubs or hobby organizations. Maybe it my sunny disposition that keeps me out though.

Anyway, back to meetings. The only way I find any meeting tolerable is to draw through it. It also keeps me awake.

Many years ago my dear wife trained me well and I do not draw the people attending meetings. If I find someone especially inspirational then I might draw my interpretation of them. There are some sketches in this group that may or may not have attended the meeting in one way or another. I will never tell.

Here for you viewing pleasure and maybe a bit of snickering are the six drawings I did Thursday morning starting at 9:00 and ending just before noon.

For those that are not familiar with the materials I use here is a brief description. I use cover stock from local paper stored on a clipboard, black and white Prismacolor pencils, and occasionally some watercolor pencils.

The Complete Image

Here is the whole image that I painted for Corel's release of Painter 2015.

Like most artists do when viewing their own work; I see several things I want to change or add.

I am going to get some prints made of her for anyone that wants one. I don't have prices yet but will get that posted as soon as possible.

Little Fishes

For the last few weeks I have been having way too much fun drawing with white Prismacolor pencils on black paper. I also like strange looking fish so what better way to combine some practice with some fun. I find that drawing white on black is not intuitive for me and it takes some thought to keep the values in the right places. Of course with strange, deep sea fishes, no one really can see them down there in the dark. So, without further delay, here you will find a few fishy drawings. Hope you enjoy them.

"Why are they facing the same direction?" you might ask. Beats me.  

One of those meeting things.

I have a hard time sitting through meetings without falling asleep. This is especially true when the speaker is not amplified and quiet, the lighting is subdued for a PowerPoint presentation, the room is warm, I am late, and therefore must sit in the back of the room. I think I hear about 40% of what is being said through my one good ear. I can pick up some things by listening to those around me. Sometimes not.

This week I am in the back of a HR meeting that fit the above criteria. Since I was already late to the meeting (with a good excuse), sitting in the back of a darkened and warm room, and having a hard time hearing, I took out the clipboard and a pencil and started staying awake.

The general theme of the discussion at this point was questions that you can not ask potential employees. The question of age came up. Someone in the audience said that it was probably not a good idea to mention the cliche, "you can't teach an old dog new tricks!". It got me thinking ..... and so I sketched the reason you can not teach an old dog new tricks. It's an attitude thing.

The drawing is done with black and white Prismacolor pencils on a mid-value, smooth card stock. It took about 45 minutes to get this far. It would have taken an hour but I was 15 minutes later after all.