Learning to Draw: Stone in the Strange Lot West of the Library

To hell with trying to draw something, was my cry at noon today, after in two attempts failing to capture the commissionaire guiding cars in to pay their property taxes on the west side of City Hall.
A few minutes later and a block east, faced with the centre stone (sawed-off pillar, actually) in a group of 13 others in a circle, I put the Pentel P209 mechanical pencil into gear and let it roll, doodlic. I ignored the darks and lights of the Tyndall stone.
Soon the stone, about 3x5 inches in my book, resembled one of those Lee Valley fridge magnets. I carried on curvy, claiming after a while that the best time for a dark line is after many lighter. Those voices calling from my inner jury for signs of sunlight on the stone were put on hold or transferred to the Technical Department.
Back and forth I swung the 209 over what has yet to decide if its top is flat or concave.

Learning to Draw: Taking the Learning to Draw Class or Not

My peeps want to know if I'm going through with taking the class--not just the name-calling commenters on the previous post but the waitress at Fireside Bistro who, glancing over my shoulder at the glass of beer I'd drawn, said What is that?. (I gave her time to say No, it's pretty good, I mean not bad, but. She said nothing more.)
Not. I'd planneed on walking into the class with a mechanical pencil and the sketchbook I've been drawing in, not the full kit the class requires.
Here I borrow some Phil Hall from his wonderful Killdeer: "put the art before the course" (which I just now realized is punny). I'll continue to draw out the summer, including drawing my way into essays (under way, my peeps!). Next: exciting mechanical pencil portrait of the Scarth street mall.

Learning to Draw: On Opening the "Materials List"

Now I'm really nervous. I'm thinking I'll not follow through with my registration, which seems to be screwed up anyway. This particular course looks too intensive for how I'm approaching this process. I'm going slower.
My old friend Dave in Edmonton put me onto John Ruskin on learning to draw. Before I got to that, I turned the page in The Seeing Hand: A Treasury of Great Master Drawings and found Ruskin's "Rock Formation at Glenfinlas", a rock face in every sense. The conversation there could last a long time.
He did this with ink and watercolour, 19 x 13 inches. Somehow the stream runs fast, the foliage rich and deep. The face can't be touched by any word.
Now I'm going to think about not taking the class.

Learning to Draw: Swimming Pool

Applying long minutes about perspective I'd viewed on YouTube, I swam, sat on the east-side apron (concrete), and drew Wascana Pool. With lanes, roped area, ladders, and two of the 50 or so pool-dwellers present. A ladybug, baked bright orange, did about as well, except that after flopping about half-wounded, I don't get to fly off to safety.
My pool seemed to have no water in it. (Cross "ripples" off the list of what random smudging is good for, and "any sign of time of day" and "fibreglass slide" and "pale-turquoise-and-mauve sandals two feet away".)
I thought about executing the drawing wet, which I yet might try, if I could be sure it wouldn't screw up my sketchbook (what I used to call a notebook.)
The west side underwater was darker, I noticed. I scribbled tall trees. I sketched the apron edge, forgetting to aim for the vanishing point.
It was a mess. The lane lines weren't bad.

Learning to Draw: Signage for Hot Dog Truck

The two hinged panels of the sign, when I drew shadows extending left from each base, became pantlegs leading to flat black shoes, a man or woman walking right to left. I darkened the inside, the side I could see, of the right-hand panel.
Now the pantleg flattened, no sense of leg in there. But as sign, it sort of worked. The best part was beyond my making: the strip of bright light along the nearest edges of the two panels.
I darkened the shadows, the feet turned ragged.

Overcoat, The End of It

Pardon the photo but we've reached the bottom of the overcoat story at last.

Learning to Draw: Frisbee

On the way to Tangerine for tea I thought of both having frisbees given away at my funeral and drawing a frisbee without looking at one.
Promising at first, but the more I drew, the more the frisbee seemed hollow, a dish, even from the top. I drew the inner edge, showed it curving underneath. It was darker there. I drew the word FRISBEE but could not make the letters look real. I toyed with a rationale for "not real".
Continuing to play around at the foreground edge, I implied more inside than out. A bowl, as I say, had appeared, with fragments of FRISBEE down where the berries would be instead of swirling away with the disc.
I kept looking at that leading edge, wondering what it would take to make it look just tossed. Further scribbling. I threw in a smudge. Now the frisbee was long gone, except for a couple of letters, which last time I looked, lined the bottom of a cup. I tried to add a handle and move on.