Roz Wound Up

Sketching Folks on Project Runway

Left: Faber-Castell Pitt Artist's Calligraphy pen sketch with gouache. 8.5 x 11 inches, Richeson Recycled watercolor paper. Click on the image to view an enlargement.

SPOILER ALERT: I write about which designer won season 11 of Project Runway, so if you haven't watched the finale, you've been warned.

While I seem to be forever attired in T-shirts and khakis (and sometimes Gramiccis) I have to admit that I really enjoy watching "Project Runway" to see what people come up with in a limited time frame. (Sometimes the contestants annoy me, but this season [11th] which just wrapped up last week didn't seem as bad.)

Michelle won and I have to say, if I didn't have a "uniform" I would wear clothes that she makes—I loved them all. But then I would just wear them forever even after they went out of fashion, which doesn't matter to me. I enjoyed her clothing vibe. In fact she made a pair of pants and a top one week that I could wear in different colors everyday of my life. I'm glad she won. I hope she has some success. (If you click on the link I made to her name you'll see an overview of her clothing in a short video and at 1 min. and 53 seconds or so you'll see the top and pants I could wear every day.)

While Stanley didn't win he was the designer who was the most fun to sketch. So today here are two sketches of Stanley, and then a page of gesture sketches. 

Left: A Pentel Pocket Brush Pen sketch on sumi paper, with a background added with a Montana acrylic marker (15 mm wide nib). Also 8.5 x 11 inches. The moisture from the marker warped the paper, hence the wrinkles when I scanned it. Click on the image to view an enlargement.

When sketching both versions of Stanley I actually stopped the program on the DVR. When I was working on the page of gestures I let the program run and tried to carry details in my memory.

 

 

Left: Designers on Project Runway season 11. Top Left—Michelle who actually won the season. These gesture sketches were made after quick looks, relying on my memory. Click on the image to view an enlargement.

I Love Ve Neill

Left: Faber-Castell Pitt Artist's Calligraphy Pen and Schmincke gouache sketch of Ve Neill. 8.5 x 11 inches, Richeson Recycled watercolor paper. Click on the image to view an enlargement.

"Face-Off" on Sy-Fy Channel is a reality show in which contestants vie for a huge prize and bragging rights over other special effects make-up artists.

I've written about it before, most recently on March 29, 2013—"Some Quick Sketches—Let the TV Keep Running!"

They just wrapped up a "season," which seems to be happening about two-times a year in "Survivor-Reality-Competition-Show" mode that these shows fall into.

Ve Neill is one of the judges and I think it's great fun to see how absolutely happy some of the contestants make her with their creative solutions. (Ve Neill also has an impressive film resumé.)

The show is coming back this summer with another season (the fifth). I recommend you check it out if you enjoy watching people use clay to model creatures, then cast molds, and then apply make-up. It's a little bit of a behind the scenes look at all the work that goes into creating the make-up effects and prosthetics we see on our favorite TV and film characters.

Some Quick Sketches—Let the TV Keep Running!

Left: Three quick sketches while the TV was still running. Faber-Castell Pitt Artist's Calligraphy Pen and gouache on 8-1/2 x 11 inch Richeson Recycled watercolor paper. Click on the image to view an enlargement.

Since people don't stand still for you when you're out and about sketching, I find it helpful to practice "speed sketching" by watching TV and NOT STOPPING the action.

The result is more of a memory drawing (my memory only lasts about 30 seconds) than a gesture drawing. Sometimes there are only fleeting views of someone on the screen.

I try to remember what interested me about their pose and then scribble something down onto the paper. 

I slop some paint on and then I have to rewind the show I was watching because the image I was sketching is long gone, and I was looking at my paper painting and not paying attention to the show, so if I'm to know what happened I have to go back.

Not something you can do easily if you watch TV with others!

Left: Another quick sketch made while the TV was still running. But for this one I actually rewound the show to check on some things before I added paint. Faber-Castell Pitt Artist's Calligraphy Pen and gouache on 8-1/2 x 11 inch Richeson Recycled watercolor paper. Click on the image to view an enlargement.

While I never get my proportions right on these quick views I find that I can still see what it was that interested me in the original moment of viewing. My brain can only hold on to that one small thing for that long. In the first image I posted it was the woman's bust line, square collar and curved shoulder which caught my attention. In the second image I was struck by the floppy, odd "bangs" and dark eye make-up. Later I learned that the hair could actually be put up in a Mohawk and it all made sense!

These were all contestants on the recent season of "Face-off" which is a special effects competition show I love. (You get to see people sculpting and molding prosthetics for film characters.)

If you want to sketch from the TV while it's still running I recommend that you do the following:

• Watch intently and if something catches your eye, start sketching immediately (i.e., have your pen and paper in hand all the time). 

If you haven't done this before watch until the person or animal is no longer on the screen (1 to 5 seconds is often typical) and try to remember everything that "spoke" to you. Then rewind the show and watch that bit again, before drawing to give yourself another go at seeing.

• Even though the subject is no longer on the screen try to get down on paper what it was that attracted your attention without worrying about your sketch being perfect. 

• Throw some paint on your sketch. This is a very quick way to add shadows and color notes. It's fun to try and recall what color something was. I think this is a useful exercise not just for painting but for improving your memory in general.

• If you've been intent on sketching from memory what you saw only briefly by now a couple minutes will have passed. (I typically get a 1 to 5 second view, a minute to 90 seconds of scribbling, and 1 to 2 minutes of painting—depending on whether or not I'm letting layers of paint dry. If you are letting paint dry before putting on additional layers you're going to have more painting time.)

By letting the TV continue to run you have to force yourself to remember where all the body or facial parts were, the shading, the colors…but often you also get second, and third views of the same subject if you look up. They are in a different position, but chances are they have the same outfit on. Someday I may be able to extrapolate what a person looks like rotated in space, but for now this is a quick way to practice, to see another view and incorporate it with the information you've already absorbed.

• At this point I rewind the show to my original sighting and get back into viewing the show. Typically in less than 5 minutes my attention is caught by something else and I start all over again.

I can do this for a couple of hours and end up with several pages of interesting sketches. They might not be pretty, but I learn a lot in the process.

Is It Fun to Sketch Ed Asner or WHAT?

Left: 8.5 x 11 inch sketch of Ed Asner (as he is now) on a TV commercial for the old Mary Tyler Moore Show. He was playing his character Lou Grant in the commercial. Pentel Pocket Brush Pen on cream Stonehenge. The PPBP feels great on this paper. Click on the image to view an enlargement.

Asner has a fantastically interesting face—the lines of it, the flexibility of it.

Part of me wanted to paint this sketch after I finished it. Stonehenge is quite fun to paint on, especially with gouache.

But the other part of me said stop, you've done enough.

Which is sort of true of this post too, given the title.

"Don't Worry, You Don't Need To Call the Police. I Let Myself in"—Paul Drake: The Hardest Working P.I. on TV

Left: Direct brush sketch (using a mix of red and blue gouache) of actor William Hopper who played Paul Drake on "Perry Mason." (8.5 x 11 inches; Richeson Recycled Watercolor paper.) Click on the image to view an enlargement.

Yes Paul Drake is the hardest working P.I. (private investigator) on TV.

Compared to Drake Thomas Magnum is a complete layabout. Chaotic and frenetic come to mind, when considering the approach Magnum takes (and the appropriations he makes of friends' skills and resources—he must have saved a lot of lives in Vietnam because he's called in a lot of chips). Even my beloved Jim Rockford who just wants to live in the present moment and stay out of prison so he can fish a little seems not hardworking so much as free falling through the violent antagonism of those around him (Jim's one of those people always letting people call in a favor).

(And while we're on the subject of "Rockford Files," is there any better TV theme song except for "Parks and Recreation"?)

But really, how did I come to the conclusion that Paul Drake is the hardest working P.I. on TV?

For over 3 weeks in January and February my world shrank to the couch. I was too weak to move from it. The body-jerking spasmodic coughs which shook my frame, flashed through my eyes, and exploded out of the back of my head made it impossible to read or draw. I did what any sensible person would do I watched my own mini (major) marathon of "Perry Mason" episodes.

(MeTV and Hallmark both run shows from different seasons—I only watch the 1957 to 1966 episodes, not the reboot episodes from the 1980s and 1990s made without Hopper, who died at age 55 in 1970.)

No case was too small, no case was too involved (and believe me some cases are so convoluted that I should have kept a venn diagram on how all the characters were interrelated). I kept watching, sometimes falling in and out of consciousness. (I just had a garden variety cold which brought along a secondary bronchial infection.)

Left: A quick sketch of Paul Drake—Faber-Castell Pitt Artist's Calligraphy pen and light washes of Schmincke gouache. (8.5 x 11 inches, Richeson Recycled watercolor paper.) Click on the image to view an enlargement.

At first Drake irritated me—blonds tend to do that to me. There is a visual value contrast I find annoying. At times I couldn't take my eyes off that platinum blond hair, expertly coifed. In some episodes the forelock is so tightly curled into a whirling spiral I thought it must have lodged in the subconscious of Bill Watterson and been the model of Calvin's Crisco experimentation.

Still ill, I started thinking about Drake's clothing—when I was a child watching reruns of the show in Australia I always thought of Drake as "that peacock"—too flashy for a p.i. Even at age eleven I already knew the best ways to disappear in a crowd and follow someone without being observed.  

Thanks to my sojourn in Australia where out-of-date U.S. TV shows from before my "age of reason" were run continually, as well as Samurai shows galore, I'm expert in trivia facts about a lot of age-inappropriate TV shows I never would have seen otherwise until the advent of DVD sets. Come to think of it, if I hadn't lived in Australia I might not love TV as much as I do…TV and birds…but that's another story.

I thought his Glen plaids and linen twill weaves were a bit much—and that hair, well enough said on that eddy of a 'do. Surely his appearance screamed attention.

Then it occurred to me one day while I was polishing my father's many pairs of shoes (it was one of my allowance tasks and he was always a snappy dresser—it was the one job I really loved, knowing I was contributing to the final effect) that Drake was a California boy and his clothes and hair were what made him blend in with the "California casual" of the day. It was Perry, dressed mostly in somber jackets sometimes enlivened by tone on tone stripes and usually scowling like a Jesuit at the Inquisition, who would stand out.

So on recent viewing what really stuck out for me was simply, that hair, that Dairy-Queen-Ice-Cream-Cone curl of blond. But then I did have a temperature. (OK, so I couldn't leave it alone.) 

Yet he blends in, because that's what one peacock does in a flock of peacocks (though two peacocks probably don't want to be in a flock because of territorial issues but I'm not an expert on peacocks and I'm rather an expert on Drake by this time).

Here's a guy who can smile at the ladies and cajole—ladies of all types if you get my drift—without a creep factor. He can flirt with Della (Perry's secretary, who by the way can flirt right back) without a harassment angle. He can hold his own against a gang of punks. He can tackle a fleeing felon.

But wait for it: he can track down ANYONE with sometimes nothing more than a first name and no internet! And he can do it on a time crunch. He's a clutch player.

Drake operated before people could "google" stuff, or check street addresses on Google Maps, or even look up movie titles for actors on IMDB to keep a lunchtime conversation going.

Of course we know he has minions, oops, they are called operatives in the private detection arena. Lots of operatives. So many in fact that he every once in awhile will refer to one as "my best man." (By my math that means he has at least 5 operatives in L.A.: a couple trainees or unpaid interns, a good guy, a better guy, and his best man.)

He has satellite offices. Besides working in the same building as Perry, Drake has a San Diego office. The need for p.i.s in Southern California is great. (Don't we learn this from Raymond Chandler?)

The fact that Drake has operatives tells us that business is good and that he can support them, his wardrobe, his hairstylist, and offices in the same pricey building as Perry's offices. The fact that he has operatives also tells us he has people to tail other people and still other people to sort through stacks of old records.

Yet time and time again what we see, because Perry is his best client (and probably has the most interesting cases), is Drake doing things for Perry—staying up and reading those records, executing a skip trace, or flying across the country in search of some artifact.

He is a success because he is the least ADHD of any TV detective. He takes a direction and sticks.

Lying there on the couch as January melded into February it suddenly became crystal clear to me—

1. I really needed to get well,

2. Detection techiques have changed considerably since Drake's day becoming both less labor intensive and impacting the way dramatic action forms,

3. Drake's surface demeanor is calm, but his actual energy level is exhausting, and

4. Perry can sit in court having epiphanies and weaving narrative threads together, but it is Paul Drake, P.I. who is the real hero of "Perry Mason." Drake's efforts make manifest the machinations of Perry's brain.

That's worth paying a retainer for. 

Look Who Was On "Perry Mason" the Other Day

Left: Quick sketches with the Pentel Pocket Brush Pen while watching an episode of "Perry Mason." (Richeson Recycled watercolor paper, 8.5 x 11 inches.) Click on the image to view an enlargement.

I was up late one night early in January, and a young, very young Leonard Nimoy (bottom right on the sketch page) showed up on "Perry Mason."

Of all the actors that were on the show and then went on to other gigs (just the other night I saw an episode with Adam West, pre-Batman) seeing a young, non-alien Leonard Nimoy has been the most startling. I think I may have made his ears a little more pointed than they actually were, memory overlapping observation.

So I Was Watching Top Chef the Other Night and…

Left: Quick sketch of Chef Stefan Richter ("Top Chef") with a Faber-Castell Pitt Artist's Calligraphy Pen and gouache washes on Richeson Recycled Watercolor Paper, 8.5 x 11 inches. (Name misspelled on the drawing.) Click on the image to view an enlargement.

So the other night I was watching "Top Chef" and I decided I'd better get some sketching in before the end of the day. (Bouts of coughing had kept me from doing any sketching.) I stopped the action (which you can do with a DVR) and quickly sketched with the Faber-Castell Pitt Artist's Calligraphy Pen. Then I painted immediately right over those lines with various light washes of gouache. I used light washes because I didn't want to obscure the ink lines.

I was having a lot of fun glazing different colors onto other colors and mopping blue all over the place. I don't typically use Raw Sienna in my palette, but I had some put out before I was sick and it was still sitting there on my china plate.  

I like the roughness of the sketch. I went to scan it and then when I was cropping it I coughed and my fingers hit the wrong keys and I ended up inverting the image.

I thought it looked so fun inverted that I saved a copy to show you. I love the way the ink lines all become white. I thought about combining them in some way, but I started to cough again, so that ended my experiments.

Left: Inverted version of the opening sketch. In this version you can see the little note I made to myself about correcting the shape of his nose. It is emerging from the background on the left. Click on the image to view an enlargement.

I've been working quite a bit on the Richeson Recycled Watercolor Paper lately and I have to say it's pretty tough. I don't scrub at it like I might scrub at Arches (which is so heavily sized it would take a Brillo pad to rub through it) but the sizing on this paper keeps performing even when I go back to add additional layers or to pick up and blot out.

I enjoy using Schmincke gouache in light washes like this because it has so much punch, and sometimes I just don't want to let go of my ink lines.

I was disappointed to see Stefan bumped from the show. I would have enjoyed more opportunities to sketch him.

Trouble with "The Following"

I am a huge Kevin Bacon fan. I enjoy watching him act. He has given us some exceptionally fine performances (and some goofy performances I love just as much). I was really looking forward to watching "The Following" a new series from Kevin Williamson (creator/writer/executive producer) which premiered two weeks ago on Fox.

Now after seeing the second episode I'm ready to pack it in. 

Maybe it's because I've been recovering from bronchitis for two weeks and haven't been outside and I'm a little stir crazy. Or maybe it's because I'm grumpy because I haven't seen or talked to anyone but Dick in all that time because when I do talk I start coughing. Or maybe I'm just grumpy.

But here's the thing. I'm not really big on conspiracy narratives.

Also cults are fine, but a cult around Edgar Allan Poe is like first-year grad school stuff—really, really, lame, unless you want to go deeper and darker than the writer has gone here (Williamson hasn't scratched the surface on Poe).

So lame in fact it reminds me of an idea someone tossed up late one night in graduate school (first year in fact) when Gordon got drunk and started reciting "Don Juan" and to keep him quiet Alan did an end run with "Romanticism," I did a slap down on Thoreau, and Steve started hyperventilating about Poe. (Only some of the names have been changed because not everyone was innocent.) It didn't hurt that for the third and final time in my life I'd had a little bit too much to drink—but hey, it was Pernod and that's just like drinking "Good and Plenty."

The point is, even a little silly from drink you can see Poe isn't where you want to go. Not in this direction.

With the poor tragic hero (who has been given a Hemingway wound—let's throw everything into the pot) like Ryan Hardy (Bacon) in this situation there isn't going to be much for him to do but stand around and look aggrieved. (Of course he'll look great doing it, but over time that isn't interesting.)

After episode 2 it seemed clear to me that 1. Everyone anywhere could be in the "cult" and so at any time for whatever convenience the writers needed we could have a new cult member pop up. Not too rigorous is it?

I'm putting my money on the killer's wife being still in cahoots with her ex-husband, Joe Carroll. I know we saw the new FBI team leader Parker give Joe the complete "stories and poems" of Poe. She could of course turn out to be in league with Joe (heck, the way Williamson has written it I could be in league with Joe), but I think she's just trying to stir the pot.

I'll still bet on the wife because she is too manipulative in "acceptable" circumstances and it would wound Ryan the most, which seems to be what Joe is after…

…but that's the problem. I don't care. They haven't given me any reason to care in the two hours they have asked me to invest. (And if they are going to groom the Mike Weston [actor Shawn Ashmore] character as a susceptible convert at some later date, because he's so eager and impressionable; or they are setting him up for an early death—I can't care about any of that either. I just find his character annoying.)

So I've knocked it off my list of TV to watch. I figure when it's all over someone who is an even more steadfast fan of Bacon's than I am, will be happy to give me a 3 paragraph précis of what happened and who all was in on it; or whether it was all just some sort of dream, heck why not. In the meantime I have all those hours to enjoy elsewhere.

But I am grumpy, because I was looking forward to seeing Bacon act every week.

Daaa Dummm daaa DUM, Daaaaa Dummm daaa DUM: Paint By Numbers Perry Mason

Left: Sketch of Raymon Burr in "Perry Mason." Dry Stabilo All (orange) on Richeson Recycled watercolor paper, 8.5 x 11 inches. Click on the image to view an enlargement.

OK, it's not "paint-by-numbers" but it looks like the canvases for those kits doesn't it?

I drew this image of Raymond Burr when I had been fighting a killer headache all day (but really wanted to sketch something). 

I had been working in brush pen and NO ONE was looking like themselves. Dick came in after his swim to chat. I whined quite a bit about the sorry state of affairs. He shook his head and went to the kitchen to make himself a sandwich.

I put down my pen and picked up an orange Stabilo All pencil. Since I hadn't been getting anywhere with the brush pen it was time for a change. I stopped the TV when Perry turned to look at Della…

I started with the right eye (on the viewer's left) and worked out from there, more slowly than I usually work, though the sketch was done in less than 10 minutes. 

It's essentially a contour drawing of all the different planes in his face. I worked very deliberately rechecking spatial distance before I put a line down. (I had to lower the chin after I drew it, but there is a plane of shadow there too, so that doesn't bother me.)

Black and white TV from this time period is fantastic for this. Everything was lit for drama. (I also put in the shape of his cast shadow on the wall.) (You can see an earlier sketch of Raymond Burr done with the Aquash Brush Pen here and read about my fascination with the TV show.) 

Part of me wanted to paint this right away. Part of me couldn't bear to cover up the lines. That second part of me won and I decided to keep it this way. It makes me smile. Which is a great result on a day like this.

Also slowing myself down and being so deliberate had the effect of breaking the headache up. I was able to get 5 hours of computer work done as if nothing had happened. Enough work that I felt it perfectly reasonable to go and sketch some more (this time peppers from the fridge).

But this sketch still makes me laugh. 

Another Look at the Texture on Gutenberg

Left: Sketch of Adam Scott from "Parks and Recreation" on Gutenberg paper with a Faber-Castell Pitt Artist's Calligraphy pen. Click on the image to view an enlargement. (6 x 8 inch approx. journal page.)

I think this sketch shows the fun you can have with this paper and pens, letting the pen skip over the texure of the paper. You can also get more solid lines if you want to use a little more pressure. All in all it's a fun paper to use for sketching.

And "Parks and Recreation" is a great show—consistently hilarious with a brilliant ensemble cast that keeps digging deep into areas that just make me gasp—in a recent Halloween outing Andy and Ron have to bargain with princesses; and you sure wouldn't want to miss Leslie's sex-ed lecture to retirees!

I can't stop laughing long enough to type any more. Why aren't you watching this show?!