Before there was painting, pen and digital, there was the pencil, for me. It is my favorite tool even to this day and I don't get to do it even that often anymore. My favorite pencil is Prisma and these are done with "Steel" color. Goes on like lead but you can't erase and it does not smear. These are drawings from a great black and white book I bought from the Swap meet a few weeks ago called A Pictorial History of the American Theatre 100 Years 1860 1960 by Daniel Blum. Great pictures of the actors back then and the costumes are incredible. These are folds and clothing studies.

Horses Taught Me to Draw

Some rough sketches for a project I am working on. I grew up drawing horses. I read every horse story for girls there was, Black Beauty, The Black Stallion, etc. My parents bought me Breyer horses for my birthday and Christmas. I drew them from all angles and so drawing horses come as natural as breathing to me. For a long time, I wondered why I could not draw the figure like I could draw animals and sometimes when I get a block, I will draw a horse to get my brain flowing again. I will forever have this Visual Imprint of a 3 dimensional model horse in my brain. People ask me all the time, How do you learn to draw animals so well? If you want to really learn, you sculpt the animal. I have been working on a sabor tooth cat sculpt which will give me that Visual Imprint.

Drawings of the neighbor's dogs. It's hard being an artist and a parent at the same time. I find that I am never fully focused anymore. It's not that I can't, it's either exhaustion or Sienna screaming "Mommie! Lookit! Lookit!" Or just screaming in general; sometimes I think she's being eaten by a bear, then I think, wait a minute, there are no bears in Brad's backyard. And I just have one. I don't know how parents with multiple children handle life. In this case, as soon as I saw a good pose on the dog(s), Sienna would call them over and there goes a great pose. Sigh....

Normally I draw with my favorite prisma color pencil, Tuscan Red. Since taking Paul Wee's class on figure sketching, I have reluctantly switched to pen. These are done on a teeny little sketchbook, 4" x5", almost the size of a package of cigarettes, only big enough to make thumbnail sketches.