30 Sketches Projects I-VII

Surprisingly, this Altamira Oriole is a member of the blackbird family. It is a large songbird indigenous to the ole Lone Star State. I do have an intense Texas nostalgia - this little guy would look great with a belt buckle and handlebar stache .

This is a rock dove in flight on a sheet of 24"x36" butcher paper. Maybe I am getting a bit introspective and maybe this has nothing to do with this particular sketch, but I am really missing the support of school. 2 months ago I had 15 peers and a couple of professors that could tell me all the things wrong and right about this sketch and the others. Its not about the grades or assignments anymore - I am only doing it for myself which makes me question the validity of it all.

This sketch was especially challenging but in the end those are the ones that I enjoy the most. (Who am I kidding those are the ones that make me want to become an accountant). Looks like this juvenile eagle has alot on his mind. I feel this image would best belong airbrushed on the side of a 1970's kidnapper van.

I find the intense ugliness of the Greater Adjutant to be oddly beautiful. I've been intrigued with this scavenger bird ever since I saw a photo of one proudly perched atop an enormous mountain of garbage. Oh how I love to find beauty in filth.

You can see in this baby Magpie's eyes that he is just waiting to grow up and peck your eyes out. Aren't babies of all species supposed to look sweet and kind-hearted? This charcoal and pastel sketch is on a piece of 11"x14" drawing paper. Tuesdays = 12 hour workday which in turn = smaller, meaner sketches.

This is a Boat-billed Heron. I think I used everything in the studio: pastel, charcoal, gouache, watercolor pencil, watercolor, pencil, and love.

Know your tools & materials - that was my mantra during this rooster sketching-session. I think I focused on this because my tools & materials are dwindling into little piles of fine colored dust.

Whoever said drawing a featherless cockatoo on a file folder is easy was not being completely honest. This bird actually exists - her (yes her) name is Oscar. She has a rare virus which causes her to pull out newly grown feathers due to skin irritation . 2009 is bringing an entirely new usage of office supplies, "they are not just for work anymore."

I murdered this poor baby Cardinal by becoming fixated on achieving local color. It is hard to obtain a natural tone when using Miami Vice inspired colors. I couldn't fit another sprinkle of pastel or charcoal on this drawing. This also is on butcher paper which has no bite to it. Too slick for obsessive pastel application. "Crockett... Tubbs, take this bird downtown."

Thi s is a larger than life charcoal and pastel sketch of the common ole' crow. It is on a sheet of 17"x24" butcher paper which I find perfect for doing studies such as this one. I have a 100% free heaping stack of the stuff. Archival it is not, but it takes away any fear of destroying an expensive sheet of paper which leads me to work with more expressive marks. This mark-making freedom is liberating most of the time but good god it can also make for some wildly terrible drawings. Live and learn.

Entitled Free-loader, this is a sketch depicting an image of an anomaly that would never take place in the wild; a baby Wood Thrush atop a young Rose-breasted Grosbeak. Only in the minds of children and the crazed (or an expert animal trainer) could this friendship become possible.

So it begins.....a commitment to execute, document, and post a sketch everyday for 30 days. Some say it cannot be done but I beg to differ.