LTD (Learning to Draw): Those Pillars, Part Two

I passed through the alley on my way to the pub. Wish I'd brought the extra-large sketchbook I said, though I had in fact packed the book.

I blame it on the Riders right after the big win at home against B.C. Too happy was my alley, I tell you. How could a man sit still? I might draw one telephone pole but could I do five?

I imagined drawing the curve-tops of the five pillars and the puddle with its own laws.

I did think of shadow but not for long.

LTD (Learning to Draw): Planning to Draw Those Pillars Behind the CU Building, Albert and 13th

I ruled thin lines. I'd draw from a photograph (back door of the building, 8:45 a.m.--workers, well-dressed, not too happy (one of them watched me every step from her car to the back door, and I made myself a snide remark about how I don't blame her, given the visual felony about to occur)).
Soon I was drawing the alley, which on my page resembled lines, a dozen of them, originating in or heading to a single black dot about half-way up the left side and an eighth of way to the right.

That much made sense. I hated to give up that ruler.

Learning to Draw: First Among Pines East of Luther Residence, Hot Out

On the theory that bad drawing of a tree, pursued over time, looks like the tree, I packed my new pencils—Staedtler Mars© Lumograph© Drawing pencils, leads ranging from 6B to 4H. I didn’t yet know what the B stood for or the H, but I’d figure it out. (B must stand for Body, H for Heart, there.) I’d go draw that tree east of Luther, in the shade.
I selected my vantage point and reviewed my task (what we Vis Art types call study): draw the pine, probably badly, but keep going. These new pencils had to work. I’d give up and become something else, if they couldn’t work the shadows round the tree. I picked my longest pencil, the 4H.
In a while a limb in my drawing headed off to the right (the tree’s left, the brain's right) to a cluster of leaves that resembled baby chicks. To do the crown I’d have to draw nothing but leaves and somehow wind and bright sun. Did I want to spend all day drawing leaves?
What about the pines behind? Good question. Scribbly phantoms, scare me up a tree, was my first impulse. Eventually my drawn tree claimed useful enough status on my page. It wasn’t this pine (/spine), didn’t suggest the glory of any pine. But when I jabbed at the base with the 2B, it stood there.
Shadow of shadow and light of light, I’ll say that’s what I learned.

Ltd: Cumulus Cloud (With Grey Tint) Over Luther

The cloud took off before I finished it. I was left with the world's only remnant. For that reason, it looked pretty good, having snagged useful borderline--cloud and blue sky.
I'm obliged to report, however, that I seemed to have drawn a rear view of a woman with haircurls and scarf--one of my sisters, I think it was. Her shoulders were crooked for some reason.
Not because of the sisters but because of the lousy cloud, this season of drawing has--as Kramer in Seinfeld says, from the former Merv Griffin Show set he'd found and installed in his living room--"officially bottomed out".
Tonight I'll borrow that set of drawing pencils Lucy's been threatening me with. Tomorrow I'll draw those pillars behind the Credit Union building on Albert and 13th.

Learning to Draw (Ltd): The Usual Parts of One's Own Body

It was late, perhaps early. I'd been watching Oppenheimer and Jays-Royals. Feeling a cold, I'd belted back a couple of lemon brandies and fallen asleep.
Although Sam Waterston played Oppenheimer the same way he played McCoy on Law & Order and the Jays' frightful bullpen could not hold back the Royals, I dreamed nothing of it. (Not a whisper of a dream until later: driving a semi out of my friend's farmyard, trying not to wake anyone up.)
At 2:16 a.m. I activated the rarely used dimmer/fade light and picked up the Pentel P209.
I began to draw.

Learning to Draw (Ltd): Twice in One Day

1
Globe & Mail, July 3, A2: "Physicists say they are close to confirming the understanding of all matter". Good. That means I had a chance when I drew City Hall. Just the part I could see.
A simple grid started to work for the west side. Did the building hold no shadows? Not yet, according to my drawing.
I applied a straight-line scribble to that west wall. Again I managed to confuse my own eye: Is the middle corner closer or further away?
Conclusion: I need new truths--a sentiment forever obvious, of course. At the rate I'm going I'll be 80 by the time I can draw a window, with curtains and my daughter inside, about to meet me for lunch.

2
I confronted shadow head-on by drawing one--the shadow my hand made when held at a pencil point centered and 2" from the top of the page. I didn't draw the details but will tell you results were worth the page, the way my line became its perpendicular fragments from pencil nib to forearm. Small hairs included.

Learnng to Draw: Getting to the Next Drawing

This one I invented before I drew it. A bike trip for groceries. I'd buy cabbage and speak to someone. Later from my position east or west--I hadn't decided yet--of the Safeway parking lot on 13th, the conversation would lend emotional weight to this drawing that all other drawings so far lacked.
I couldn't see how the drawing would work but there I was, helmet and grocery list in hand. And my drawing kit consisting of the Pentel P209 and the 5x8 sketchbook I bought from the Art Store on campus and started using, as a notebook, on April 11, 2012. I pedalled west on13th.
I couldn't find celery seed  but picked up a cabbage, forgetting to speak, and carried myself out the door to a perch half-way up the sidewalk of the acupuncture shack across the street. I drew a van the three of the 5 elms along the Safeway lot on the Retallack side, east. The left-hand tree seemed to penetrate the van, which soon drove off. I drew shadow, grateful for its uniform shade.
Should there be dialogue between an object (/subject) and its shadow? Mine was disappointing, a shortage of definition in all things, except the ones I didn't draw.