Recent Date Stamps and Logos

I use my sketchbook journal (at least this year's) to experiment and play with typefaces, logo design, and mini-stamps. This image has been painstakingly edited and de-worded out of the page it was on. Isn't Photoshop great? Is art fun? Is work fun? The thing is, I keep doing it no matter how un-fun it is. But wait! I plan to color some of these in. That should be fun. Even if I'm not really doing professional work (art for $) these days. Wasn't that fun? I think I finished what I was working on. 4 AM here, time to publish blog and do something else.

Black tech pen on sketchbook page, 9" x 3 1/2", November 2020. Click on image for a larger view. 

McLean Evening Nov 6 1998

 

Every so often in early evening in the fall, the sun dips low and shines through the clouds with a brilliant orange light. This illuminates the leaves with enhanced color rather like some of the photo apps that intensify the subject, but no artificial enhancement was used in this sketch. That's what's happening here, on the same day as today. The church steeple you see here is really white. The location depicted here is in McLean, Virginia, one of the most affluent in our whole country, and they build with good taste.

Colored pencils and brown ink on sketchbook page, 3 1/2" x 4 1/2", November 6, 1998.

CVS Construction Site 1998

 

I love to draw construction sites. The complexity of the patterns of metal frameworks and horizontal floors satisfies me. At one point many years ago I considered becoming an architect but I heard that architects don't get jobs easily. This site is a CVS pharmacy and general store near me, which was under construction in winter when there was no snow or ice. I sat in my car doing the drawing, something I found that many artists do who want to work on-site in winter. There's construction all over my town but no place to park safely to do a drawing. This building is still going strong; I shop there often at "West Falls Plaza."

Colored pencils on sketchbook page, 4" x 5", January 31, 1998. Some of the left side has been cut off because I couldn't get the image to fit.

Bright Autumn 1998

Looking through my image files on this Blog I've found countless studies of autumn leaves but not this one from my Lavishly Illustrated 1998 Sketchbook. I remember doing this while I sat at a picnic table next to the library nearby. These trees are at a park where I spent many a restful hour. I don't do as many of these sketches of foliage as I used to, it all seems the same to me. But the leaves were especially bright that year, and also this one.

Colored pencils on sketchbook page, 8" x 4 1/2", October 29, 1998.

"Miss Congeniality"

 

This creature has aspects of many different living things: crustacean, arthropod, insect, avian. I'm not sure of the size, but it's big enough to support sentience and even wear ornaments. Again I don't know whether these beings have different genders but "Miss Congeniality" here doesn't look glad to see you. I suspect she's sick of the election.

Brown ink and markers on sketchbook page, 3 1/2" x 5 1/2'', November 3, 2020.

Loblolly Pine 1998

I drew this handsome  Loblolly Pine at a campsite where I was stopping for a short rest on my way back from Florida in January of 1998. These trees grow widely in the southeastern USA and are used by the timber industry. They are also grown for wood in greenhouses. I haven't identified any Loblollies where I live, but I'll keep a watch out for them.

Colored pencils and brown ink on sketchbook page, 3 1/2" x 7 1/2", January 29, 1998.

Black and Orange Clutter Composition

 

Halloween is over thank the gods and I tossed the black and orange roomscape back into autumnal mode. I made a suitable display of the flaming headdress (upper left center) which makes a showing every Halloween. Rugs and appropriately fall-ish textiles are everywhere along with the sky blues of a quilt designed by me and created by a friend some 20 years ago.The black and white cats are not real; they are plush and cloth toys. If you have as much clutter as I do, you might as well throw it around and sit on it. And this is not 1998; it was yesterday. 

Photograph, Canon S-90 "point-and-shoot."