Commission: Heirloom Tomatoes

Here is a drawing of some juicy heirloom tomatoes that a friend commissioned as a wedding gift for his wife. By the time I was done, I was having to invent most of the biggest tomato due to rotting. Prismacolor pencil on toned paper.

Monday Night Portrait Sessions

In August 2009, Friday Arts Project (mostly Stephen Crotts and I, and two to four other regulars at other times) began meeting in a dark room with one light shining on a friend or family member or practical stranger to practice drawing the human face. A few months after we started, we had enough work to put together a show, and we called it Countenance One. I have literally dozens of portraits from drawing one almost every week for the past year and a half. Here is the most recent portrait:







I might post others from time to time.
I usually draw with Prismacolor pencils on a medium-value matboard or paper, usually a chromatic gray or something between brown and another color. (Brownish pink, for example) All the drawings were made in 2 hours or a little less.

After doing enough of these drawings I've noticed that I'm about twice as fast as I was when we started practicing. I used to not even get both eyes in, much less something indicating the shoulder, values, much development of the hair. I'd say this has been a pretty valuable weekly exercise for me.