Tag Archives: pen and ink

Tires at a Gas Station

This picture is from the same trip to Washington DC that we made in August 2021 to visit our son and family, and from the same gas station. I loved how the tires were arrayed along the wall.

By the time I drew this picture, my eyesight problems had worsened quite a bit and I had a great deal of difficulty in laying out the lines of the picture. The perspective is out of whack. Double vision in one eye and a wavery spot in the other combined to make the lines all go uphill to the right. I noticed that this was also happening with anything I wrote. I could not see well enough to get a sense of the overall picture, though I could manage smaller individual areas all right.

Well, we keep going no matter what, don’t we. Just because I can’t see what I am drawing, well, then, I should stop? Never!

Focus instead on what you can do and go from there. This picture is a perfect illustration of that idea.

We Stand in the Store Window and We See You

Have you ever thought about the idea that the mannequins in store windows might be observing you and sizing you up?

This store window is on Lancaster Avenue in Bryn Mawr, PA, and the display and photo are from June 2021. In keeping with my ongoing project of drawing scenes from my everyday life, I did a pen sketch. Here it is. It’s in my small sketchbook and is about 5″ x 8″ or so.

Electric Meters, Glenside PA

You know what, there are so many electric meters around and all of them pretty much seem to want to keep to themselves. But they cannot hide from me.

Note: a reader gently corrected me. These are gas meters. I knew that. Of course I did. The guys are so tricky. Never mind. I still liked drawing them!

Keswick Avenue, Glenside, PA, 6/21. Pen and ink in my 8″ x 5″ sketchbook.

Southbound Toll Plaza on 95 in Baltimore MD

I’m trying to do a little more drawing. This summer (and on and on, for who knows how long, I guess until I get some new idea) I’m drawing recents sights from my daily life.

Here is a view of a toll plaza in Baltimore MD from a trip to Washington DC we made in May 2021. Pen and ink and the notebook is about 8″ x 6″ or so.

House at Norristown State Hospital

I’ve done some pictures from the Norristown Farm Park ( these drawings of Getty Cottage might ring a bell) and you may remember that the park was once the farm for the adjacent Norristown State Hospital. Patients left the hospital grounds to work on the farm in various occupations up until the 1970’s – it was thought beneficial for mental patients to have work of this sort, if they were able.

Often we walk on both properties when we go to the Farm Park – it’s easy to cross into the campus, which, though mostly closed, still has interesting buildings of all eras to view. This house is one of them. I took the photo and made the following drawing in August, 2020.

Pen, in my 8″ x 8″ sketchbook.

More Sidewalk Art: Twenty-Four

A while back I wrote a post about some artwork I did inspired by a book:  Drawing Lab for Mixed-Media Artists: 52 Creative Exercises to Make Drawing Fun, by Carla Sonheim. (Look here for that post.) It’s turned into an ongoing series. I’ve been very inspired by the same subject – the cracks in the sidewalks under my feet.

Search this blog under the term “sidewalk art” to find earlier posts in the series.

My method is to take one photo and rotate it through a circle – that way I can do four drawings from one photo. Here is the source photo for the drawings done on 7/15/20:

and here is the artwork.

More Sidewalk Art: Twenty-Three

A while back I wrote a post about some artwork I did inspired by a book:  Drawing Lab for Mixed-Media Artists: 52 Creative Exercises to Make Drawing Fun, by Carla Sonheim. (Look here for that post.) It’s turned into an ongoing series. I’ve been very inspired by the same subject – the cracks in the sidewalks under my feet.

Search this blog under the term “sidewalk art” to find earlier posts in the series.

My method is to take one photo and rotate it through a circle – that way I can do four drawings from one photo. Here is the source photo for the drawings done on 7/6/20:

 

 

and here is the art.