Posts Tagged ‘Sketches’

68 results.

University Street Fair Day 0ne

by wpmorse on May 18, 2013 at 10:02 pm

Corner47th&UniversityDanceonthestreet fabulouspartyboys Well the Street Fair season has begun again. Starting with my very favorite, The University District Street Fair on the Ave!

And it had everything it always has Music, overpriced festival food, obnoxious evangelists, arts and crafts, the list goes on!

To a certain extent I think it’s gone down hill quite a bit. For the longest time my favorite part of the street fair was all of the artists with my favorite part being the opportunity to talk shop with the watercolorists. This year there were no water colorists and hardly any regular artists (two painters, one photographer, two caricaturists. All in all I think the whole things been going down hill quite a bit. Still the people watching is always fun and I got to get a few sketches in. The first two being rushed street scenes and the other being musicians from the band Fabulous Party Boys.

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Friday Museum Sketch

by wpmorse on May 17, 2013 at 6:26 am

FourElementsToday’s sketch is an Allegory of the Four Elements done in 1611  by Louis Finson (1580-1617).

I really like this piece. Every time I look at I can’t believe that is was done in the seventeenth century. It keeps making me think of some of the more modernist styles particularly Mexican Muralism.

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Friday Museum Sketches

by wpmorse on May 10, 2013 at 7:37 am

LadyLouisamannersI haven’t been able to get as much of the Seattle Art Museum’s Rembrandt, Van Dyck, Gainsborough exhibit as I would like. I’ve been either going there on the weekend when it’s packed which does not really lend itself to constructive sketching or I get there at the end of a weekday when the museum closes at five and I’m desperately trying to get something good finished before I get kicked out.

Anyway today’s was done last Thursday when I only had a had a half hour to work with (I would have had more but I got into a fairly good conversation with one of the security guards) So today’s sketch a portrait of Lady Louisa Manners done in 1779 by Joshua Reynolds. It’s done in the style approved by the Royal Acadamy as it intentionally takes on a timeless and mythic appearance and avoids any topical content or current fashion of the time.

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Friday Museum Sketches

by wpmorse on April 26, 2013 at 8:26 am

DogsandShepherdsfightingToday’s sketch is another from the Seattle Art Museum’s Rembrandt, Van Dyck, Gainsborough exhibit, Thomas Gainsborough‘s Two Shepherd Boys With Dogs Fighting from 1783.

Since the place was pretty crowded on a Sunday afternoon, I took the exhibit tour afterwards. It was described as a picture of human cruelty with the boy raising the stick to hit the dogs is actually the one trying to save the loosing dog and the smiling boy who is restraining him actually wants the fight to continue. The docent also said that apparently Gainsborough planned to do a follow up painting of the two boys wrestling in the dirt as the two dogs watched.

I’m  fascinated how the artist was able to get the pose of the dogs in action like that without a camera. Tons of thumbnail sketches? Taxidermy models? A really good memory? I know I’m impressed.

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Friday Museum Sketch

by wpmorse on April 19, 2013 at 8:20 am

PrudenceToday’s sketch debuts my new Canon Pixma MG5420 multipurpose scanner and printer with the “The Exchange of Produce” (yes… really… while it is supposed to be allegorical I’m pretty certain the name looses something in the translation) by Francois Boucher in 1768 from the Seattle Art Museum’s Rembrandt, Van Dyck, Gainsborough exhibit. It’s a nice example of the pastoral subject matter that was all the rage in the Rococo style.

As I mentioned last week the last time I was there and did this picture, the place was packed and I really couldn’t  get into my zone so the sketch has some major mistakes with the placement and size of the figures… Though in hindsight and looking at the original again I must say it’s not quite as bad as I remembered.

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Friday Museum Sketches

by wpmorse on April 5, 2013 at 8:03 am

DurgaToday’s sketch is from the Asian Art Museum and is a stele of Maha Devi Durga  (The supreme goddess Durga) made in central India during the 11th and 12th century out of sandstone. (The god Ganesha makes a nice little cameo over her right shoulder)

I did this one after two days of doing two minute poses at Sakura-Kon so doing this one in 45 minutes in a comfortable chair was like taking the weights off and sprinting to the finish line.

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Sakura-Con Sunday

by wpmorse on April 1, 2013 at 6:16 am

SakuraC0n201304 Sakuracon201305Well I did another day at Sakura-Con. I can’t say I got quite as many good pictures this time around. While there were plenty of people in costume there weren’t many of the “professional” cosplayers so there wasn’t that many good poses for me to work with. The best (at least from my perspective were a group of musicians playing music from video games and My Little Pony.

Still it was fun to watch and a useful exercise.

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Sakura-Con Saturday

by wpmorse on March 31, 2013 at 8:00 am

I must admit I haven’t done Sakura-Con for a while. I used to, in fact I was the official photographer for the first three years back when it was still called Baka-con. I’d spend the whole weekend there and when I say that I mean the WHOLE weekend doing a totally masochistic marathon mastering the art of sleeping in film rooms (Sit near the projector that way security is less likely to notice things provided you sit up straight and change rooms frequently) But gradually I stopped.

There were several reasons the fact that they started having it on the same weekend as Norwescon and with Youtube and anime going mainstream. I no longer was dependent on it for discovering all of those hard to find titles. On a more embarrassing level all of the cosplayers started triggering an instant midlife crisis for me. While I’m not so pathetic as to go to a con to find love at the same time realizing that you’re probably going to have to ask anyone you talk to for ID begins to get to you after a while. After a while I’d find that the only reason I’d really want to go was to look for hard to find art books in the dealer room and I refuse to pay for the privilege of shopping.

However it was a nice day and it occurred to me it was a nice day and I could probably zip downtown and do a little bit of people watching and maybe get in some extreme sketching in. If it didn’t work out there’s lots of other things to do on a nice day in downtown Seattle. Turned it worked out pretty well there were lots of cosplayers hanging out in the Freeway Park behind the convention center and I was able to get at least three pages in. Sakuracon201301 Sakuracon201302 Sakuracon201303

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Friday Museum Sketches

by wpmorse on March 29, 2013 at 10:42 am

AfricanMasksWell as I mentioned earlier this week. The Seattle Art Museum was packed to the gills this Sunday so I didn’t really get into my zone at all as far as the sketching was concerned and so I just ended up doing a whole lot of people watching. The only pictures I finished the day with that were not complete disasters were these three from the museum’s African Mask.

The first is from the a Lipiko mask of the Makonde  people. The middle one is Hemba and the Last is Congolese Luba.

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Friday Museum Sketches

by wpmorse on March 22, 2013 at 6:15 am

Figures-With-Fruit-and-GameAs I mentioned on Monday I finally got around to seeing the Seattle Art Museum’s Rembrandt Show last Sunday. Regretably I got their just under an hour before closing so all I had time for was a rushed circuit and this sketch.

So anyway this is “Figures with Fruit and Game” CA 1635 by Franz Snyders 1579-1657 A friend of Rubens they often collaborated. Snyders specialty was backgrounds and still lives and according to the caption on the painting often provided these details for Rubens’ paintings.

 

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