What I really do in meetings....

But only to keep from making snide comments all the time.

Really.

Waiting at the bus stop

My car is in the shop, so I've been taking public transit to and from work. I only had 20 pages left in my hardback reading book, so I left it at home. Waiting for the bus, I pulled out my sketchbook to capture the odd roof of the dentist office across the street. I got the basic outlines done before the bus came. On the bus I did some detailing and started to lay down the color.

I use a brush pen - a watercolor brush with the water in the pen handle - and a miniature kiddie paint box with dabs of Windsor Newton watercolors squeezed from the tube. The paints are pretty muddy from years of mixing, but they get the job done. A quick transfer to BART at twelfth and Broadway. Again I managed to get a seat, and was able to finish laying down the color before switching to Muni for my last transit leg. And all before my "working day" began!

Sketching as a way of seeing

I suppose it is not surprising to any of my long-term art followers that when I start to feel comfortable with a subject I begin drawing cartoons of it. Today's case in point being the above spiny lobster. Quick sketches like this are my way of seeing what I have learned, and what I still need to know. For example, I know that spiny lobsters have four pairs of walking legs and roughly how long they are in relation to the body. How many segments are there on each leg? What shape are the final segments? More research is needed!

Cross-posted ramblings

Penny, N. (2002) "Lacewings of Costa Rica" Proceedings of the California Academy of Sciences, vol. 52 no. 12. Image 117 by Diane T Sands. Images 118, 119 by Victoria Saxe

Over at the From the Stacks blog today I rambled a bit about the different reasons one creates a scientific illustration. The highlight of which (I think) is the above illustration. I probably inked the wings in 1996 or 1997. The head and body were done by my fellow-illustrator, Victoria Saxe.

Wild Boars, Feral Pigs and Me.

Earlier today I posted this, my latest illustration, on the From the Stacks blog, along with all kinds of added content. Take a look, and tell me what you think.