our backyard friend’s silhouettes

our backyard friend’s silhouettes, originally uploaded by young@art.

A warmup set, and part of my new silhouette obsession: Winsor & Newton Black Indian Ink atop delta ceramcoat atop gesso atop the pages of a Moleskine (heavy stock) sketchbook.

We have no more critters in our backyard than anyone else, but I wage that ours are the cutest, because of the quail. There’s a family, about 20 of them, that run the perimeter at dusk. The California Thrasher couple have a nest somewhere in the hedge; when we lay in the sun by the bird bath, one of them will watch us from the grapefruit tree, sometimes with a red worm in his mouth, for a half-hour or more. Hummingbirds are always fighting, and the woodpeckers have assaulted the old olive tree on their continual hunt for boring insects.

faces

more faces, originally uploaded by young@art.

so, actually, this is part of that Moleskine sketchbook that’s going to the London Book Fair in a few weeks (thank you, Moleskine!). I’m extremely motivated to do a lot of sketching, consequently. And I could always use help with faces. I was discovering that I tend to draw the same features, more or less the same face, as I sketch along. Now that I’m studying faces, I’m hooked on discovering all those wonderful details that make people’s faces unique. It’s really addictive! So that’s why I’m up past midnight on a Friday, drawing at my desk (besides that fact that I’m a dork).