I have been looking a blog called Different Strokes for Different Folks. The site host puts up a photo and invites others to draw or paint it. She then places all the results on her blog. The variety of media and compositions are astonishing. Last month the photo was of this San Francisco Victorian house. It's quite beautiful and fell right in line with my year's intention to learn to draw buildings. I'm having difficulty with this intention, but I really want to learn to do it. I'm actually pleased with the way this drawing turned out. I learned a lot about following the lines and the way one line relates to the next one. The best piece of advice I got was to pick one vertical line and draw it with a ruler. Then place all other lines in relation to that original one. That works! Now if I could just speed up a bit. If I had been drawing this on site, I would have needed to pack a cooler and pitch a tent! I'm sure that those who draw swiftly and surely while standing on a street corner have been doing it for many years. I'm sure that they are so familiar with the structure of buildings and the rules of perspective that they don't need to consciously think about every line. Hopefully, with practice and patience, I can reach that goal. While I worked hard at getting the lines down correctly, I really had fun doing this and especially coloring in the windows.
This is micron pen and Pentel brush pens in the Moleskine journal.
