No Drawing Today

No drawing today, I start a new job tomorrow and I'm getting ready.

I'll try to post two tomorrow.

Burn 46

These are my current favorite shoes. No one that I know likes them even a little, but I still wear them all the time. I wish that I had more like them in different colors.


Spectracolor dark green colored pencil. These are taking me a lot more than four minutes. I'm going to have to get myself a timer and stick to it.

Burn 45

The zipper pull on my favorite hoodie sweater. I should have put some texture in the background. Spectracolor crimson red. Kept breaking like my Prismacolors. Annoying, that.

Burn 44

Oops. Forgot to post these yesterday. My phone, that I almost never use and can't check the voice mail on it. Purple Spectracolor.

Burn 43

My watch, Spectracolor burnt umber. I wear this on a chain around my neck. I've had it a long time, but people that I know still act surprised when they see me check the time on it.



Some people don't notice things. In my life, mostly boy people.

Burn 42

Melted candle, Spectracolor dark green.

Burn 41

My glasses, done with Spectracolor pencil in warm grey.
There's something wrong here. I know that the two bars behind the lens couldn't just disappear, but it looked right while I was drawing it.

Burn 40

I've been going walking with my mother some mornings. The other day she found a twig with some oak leaves and acorns attached.



It makes a really good drawing subject, and I think that at some point I'll do an extended value study.

Burn 39

I like to draw with mechanical pencils. It takes a while to finish them, but I find it a soothing way to pass the time.

I like this brand of pencil the best. I think that it's a Pentel. On the side it says P205. I like the .5 mm better than the .7 mm too.

Not getting any money for this, but if anyone from Pentel reads it, I'm available for an endorsement deal.

Burn 38

I've "borrowed" some of my dad's tools over the years. This is one of his hammers. I really like the Koh-i-noor woodless pencils. They're working very well.

Burn 37

I bought my sister a clock at Pottery Barn. It sits in her living room collecting dust, but it's pretty.


The perspective got messed up, the actual clock's much slimmer than this one. But, if I waited until I made a perfect drawing, I'd never post one, right?

Burn 36

Bill the Cat, spokesman of a generation.




Anyway, my brother Bob's got a stuffed version of him. Can't call it plush, though. It has no fur. If you've never seen the Bill the Cat doll, it's unsettling. According to Bob, Berke Breathed wanted him to be anything but cuddly. I have to say, it worked.

Burn 35

Working with the Prismacolors again. I don't particularly like mine, they keep crumbling. I'll have to buy some new and see if it's age that does that.



WD-40 can and some caps, Blue Violet Prismacolor pencil.

Burn 34

My friend Brian owns his own business. He does computer stuff, hardware, networking and other stuff. Not sure exactly what he does, but he's pretty good at it.

He has this Bluetooth thingy, which he asked me to draw. It's got a brand on it somewhere, but I didn't feel like drawing the "m."

Burn 33

My brother loves video and computer games. I spent some time with him today. While he played Guitar Hero with my friend Brian, I drew his wireless controller.


I used these really cool woodless colored pencils that I just picked up from Michael's. They're KOH-I-NOOR Hardtmuth. I really like my woodless graphite pencils, so I wanted to try these. I like them so far, but I'll need to test them a bit more.

Burn 32

One of my friends has a contest with another friend. They try to find the tackiest souvenirs and give them to one another. My friend found, in Rouen, France, a snowglobe of Joan of Arc being burned at the stake.

I found this tacky thing below at the giftshop on the second level of the Eiffel Tower. It's a red, plush keychain with gold stitching. It's wonderfully horrible. Prismacolor pencil, violet blue.

Burn 31

Last year I went to California to visit my friend Tom. His sister married one of my friends here in Texas, but my sister and I have been out to visit him a couple of times. It was really fun. I posted some pages from my journal on Calliope Arts, if you'd like to see them.

One of my teacher friends used to have her students bring her a bit of sand from their vacations. She had a collection of little plastic boxes full of sand, labeled with their origin. I wanted to save some sand from my trip and put it in a container. I wanted some shells too, but the beach at Hermosa was picked almost clean.

It took me a while to find a suitable bottle, but I got this one at an import store. It's got the sand from Hermosa, and the tiny shells we found.

This is in Prismacolor Sepia colored pencil.

Burn 30

More of the mannequin. I went searching for colored pencils last night. Turns out I own about five sets of watercolor pencils, and then the Spectracolors that I've been using. Those were a gift from a friend.



This drawing I did with my Prismacolor pencils that I found buried in an old art tool box. I'd forgotten how sometimes they can crumble as you sharpen them. This color's called Crimson Red. Though you might think "red" sufficient, it's not.

Spectracolor has a Vermilion Red. It's orange, really.

Burn 29

One of my students gave me a goat skull at the end of the school year in May. It's really cool. I've never owned a skull before. This is a close-up of its eye-socket.

Classes at Michael's

I'm teaching classes at my local Michael's Arts & Crafts store, starting with a demonstration this Saturday, September 16th from 10am to 12pm. I've got a whole slate of classes for kids and adults, and they'll all be on my October Google Calendar later today.

If you're not in the area and can't attend, please let me know what you think about the descriptions. If you have an idea for a class, please let me know that too.

Thanks for visiting, and I hope to see you soon!

Burn 28

And the ever-popular:




















Higgins Ink bottle!

Burn 27

Today's a day for finding random things on my drafting table to draw.
I give you:















the all exciting brayer! Yay!

Burn 25 & 26

Spectracolor red colored pencil, my iPod charger.
















This one's my lovely foot.

Burn 24

I used Staedtler Pigment Liner for this one, size 03. My jeans crumpled up on the bed.

Burn 23

I have one of those posable wooden mannequins. I've drawn it so many times I couldn't even count. Still trying for interesting compositions. Crayola colored pencil.

Burn 21 &22

I decided to try some with pen instead of colored pencil. These are both drawn with Staedtler Pigment Liner, size 03.

Burn 20

Spectracolor black colored pencil. I really like how scanning in grayscale goes so much faster.

Burn 19

My shorts and leg, seen from above. It's an odd vantage point to draw something, but it turned out alright. Not sure what color pencil here, but it scanned sort of orange. It wasn't orange, but there you go.

Burn 18

This box came from Indonesia. A friend of mine brought it back from a vacation she took with her boyfriend. They went to see his parents when his dad worked there. It's got wonderful carvings on it, that I couldn't do justice to in four minutes though. Spectracolor burnt umber colored pencil.

Burn 17

I'm a little behind, but I'm going to post three today to catch up. Here's the first one, it's my backpack/purse, Spectracolor crimson colored pencil.

Burn 16

I got this little woven fiber and wood box in France. I wanted a souvenir from the market in St. Remy, and saw a chair. It's the chair in the first burn drawing.
I'm not so good at bargaining, but I talked the guy down 10 Euro for the chair, and asked him to throw in the box too.

This one I'll need to do again, taking my time. I'm not satisfied with the detail on it at all, but the idea's to get something on paper, not to make something that you're neccessarily happy with.

Happy Birthday to Melanie!

Happy Birthday to my sister Melanie! Love you!

I spent the evening at her house having dinner and watching Justin Timberlake get grilled by David Letterman. It was interesting watching him scramble for words when Dave asked him about the Superbowl wardrobe "malfunction."

Burn 15

Four-minute burn number 15, in black Spectracolor. This one I scanned in grayscale, so it's a much smaller file size. Also, I took a bit more than four minutes because I really got involved in the shading.

My father's got some until recently unidentified trees in his backyard. This came from what we think is a redbud. He let me borrow it to draw under the condition that I had to give it back.

Burn 14

Again, Spectracolor Design pencil, this time Indigo Blue. Though I was thinking, maybe next time I'll just use a non-repro blue, and you can imagine the drawing, kind of like you get to imagine the details that I put but don't show up on the scanner.

I got this mirror waaay back in high school, or shortly thereafter. It's a great metaphor, because the friendship broke too. It's too bad, she was a great person, one I admired a lot. I don't think I ever told her that. I'll just think it at her, really hard, and hope she picks that up. From her non-friend, that she hasn't seen since the early 90's. Yep, it'll happen.

Burn 13 (extra, extra!)

Just because I didn't know which I'd want to post, so I scanned them both. This one's in Spectracolor purple pencil, but the purple didn't scan well. Too bad I really don't like pink.

They're items on my writing desk, and it probably took more than four minutes for this one. Though I didn't time it. If you'd like to make sure that I keep accurate time, you're more than welcome to come over and hold the stopwatch for me. ;)

Burn 12

Burn 12, items in a basket in my bathroom. Spectracolor sepia pencil.
I did some shorthand strokes for the basket instead of using strict observation, mostly so I wouldn't be working on it until next year.

Burn 11

Burn 11. Sometimes when I did the burn with my students, I'd tell them to draw their hand or their foot. If no objects seem interesting, you've always got your appendages.

Spectracolor colored pencil, my hand.

Burn 10

Here's the burn for today. It's some bottles that I keep in my kitchen. They're hard to draw, so this is actually my second attempt.
Design Spectracolor colored pencil, in purple.

Burn 09

This one I did just a few minutes ago. I seem to have a problem with my grocery produce trying to grow after a few days in my kitchen. I've had a sweet potato sprout purple stems and leaves which looked really cool, so I planted it. Now I've got this onion. The top of it looks like several scallions. It was fun to draw. Once again, colored pencil. This color's called Indigo Blue.

Four-Minute Burn Rules

There are some rules to this, self-imposed of course. The drawing must take four minutes. It must be of actual objects in front of you. No erasing allowed. Most of the time they're monochrome, but that's not a rule, really, just that it's hard to make multi-colored four-minute drawing.

I have a hard time not using "undo" when I do these in Painter on my tablet, so I'm glad that I'm using colored pencil for most of them.

Burn 08

This is my lunch from yesterday. I drew it yesterday, but I'd brought some files home to work on so I forgot to post it. It's colored pencil again, this time burnt ochre maybe. Or sienna, or umber. I get those all mixed up and I don't have the pencil in front of me. It looks really red on my monitor. But I'm almost completely sure that it was ochre. Of some kind.

Burn 07

My computer speaker and monitor. Painter IX with Wacom tablet. Gouache brush, size 05. I forgot to post this one too. Man, I'm going to have to work on that remembering thing.

Burn 06

This one turned out a weird color from the scanner. I used a raw umber colored pencil in my burn journal, but when scanned it looked too yellow. I adjusted the colors a little but it still doesn't look right.

Burn 04 and Burn 05

Here are the two burns that I did today to catch up. Both done on paper in my newly made journal, with Design Spectracolor colored pencils.



This is my mother's camera, and yes, the perspective's a bit off.



















Stuff on the kitchen counter.

Burn Journal

I found that I lacked motivation for the four-minute burns. I pondered why, as they only take four minutes. It seemed to be lack of things to draw in the small area around my computer. I don't really want to move a still life on and off my computer desk every day, so I decided to try drawing on paper and adding the middleman scanner back to the mix.

I made a journal this morning, and then made two burn drawings to catch up.
Here's the journal, and you can see the two burns above.

Burn 03

I went to bed early last night, tired from who knows what. Here's the drawing for yesterday, and I'll post one later today for today.

Again, Painter IX, 2b pencil at 50% gray, four minutes. Doesn't look very good. Next one will be a different brush. Maybe I can get better effects with that. I'll try colored pencil or marker.

Burn 02

This is my iPod. I was going to draw some chips and salsa, but I was hungry.

Painter IX, four minutes, 2b pencil at 50% grey. Not happy with it. I think that I might start doing that thing they made us do in Drawing I, create a frame for the drawing before drawing it.

Four-Minute Burn

My first year teaching I met an enthusiastic fellow teacher, without whom I doubt that I would have gotten through the second semester. He attended Parson's during the summer for his MFA, and brought many of the ideas he got there back to the high school. One of these he called the "four-minute burn."

An extremely simple idea. Each and every day, make a drawing for four minutes. I took that to my Art I classes and even had all of my classes make a sketchbook, wherein they did a four-minute burn at the beginning of every class period. The practice helped my students enormously. I still possess some before and after drawings that I would post if I didn't take copyright law and intellectual property seriously. While the students gave their drawings to me, they didn't give me permission to publish them.

Now I'd like to practice what I preach. I'll be making a daily four-minute burn for as long as I can make myself. I will be using Painter and my Wacom tablet to create the drawings though, so as to take out the middle man of the scanner.


Here's the first of what I hope will be many. A chair that I bought on my trip to France.

First Post to Michelle's Drawings

I went to France this summer, and saw many great things. I got to see the asylum where van Gogh lived in St. Remy. If you look at the photo really closely, you can see me making a rubbing on the column in the cloister.