She Sings From Somewhere You Can’t See

Today I skibbled down the Seattle Aquarium to do some sketching with co-workers. I’ve got a membership and I might as well use it, right?

Thing about sketching in public that I forget is that you have a lot of people either not noticing you at all, and standing RIGHT BETWEEN you and the thing you are sketching OR you have people peering over your shoulder and asking questions. Also, it is hard to sketch when your subjects keep swimming around, and when small children insist on banging on the glass and disturbing them. All in all, it’s a bit tricky. One feels best off just getting basic shapes and form, or concentrating on one section of the animal rather than getting a full view.

The octopus in particular is very popular, so it’s probably best to take reference photos, and let it go.

Refined the sketch of San Francisco A LOT. Changed the pose entirely.

New ideas for this go-round:
Parrots: For the parrots of Telegraph Hill.
Chinese coin tied to her feet.
Portrait of Emperor Norton

For those just joining us, the Character of the Week challenge on ConceptArt.org this week is to illustrate a city as if it was a person.

So the theme for this week’s Character of the Week at ConceptArt.org is The City. You’re supposed to envision a city personified: This week we want you to take a city, anywhere in the world, your own, or another, and visualise it as a character. Present a city as a human personality, male or female it’s up to you. If possible try to avoid national costumes, and instead imagine how the city would look as a person.

Anyone who knows me knows it took me half a second to say, “Hey, I’m gonna do San Francisco!”

Ideas for this piece:

My first sketch of San Francisco, doodled yesterday. I wanted to evoke a sorta techno-pagan feel to the city, and evoke the past of the city, the activism and the culture, as well as stress the technology. I’ve got some notes on how I want to do this, since not all of it is in the sketch.

Past: Gold dust streaming from her braids. Stylised railroad tracks circling a drum. (Each of the three drums will probably have a sort of theme.)

Culture: The drums themselves (if you’ve ever spent a summer’s afternoon in Hippie Hill in Golden Gate Park, you’d know why.) I’m pondering a sort of meditative posture instead of this floating one….something like a partial lotus position. You can’t see it in this sketch because the scan faded out too much but she has three masks tied to her wrist, as well as various talismans representing the city’s history.

Technology: She’s wearing googles (kinda steampunky) has some techy tattoos, and one of the drums will probably reflect this theme as well.

Clothes: Some trailing bits which turn into fog.

This was really supposed to be a quick sketch for the CA forums. Sometimes these things just sorta beg for more. But sometimes you also just gotta call it finished. If I was going to work this further, I’d refine the hair and shirt a lot more–they didn’t get the same attention the face did. But then with portraits, the face is the most important part.

Here’s the links to the in progress shots — the big versions are on Flickr. Feel free to click to see ‘em bigger.

Over at ConceptArt, there’s a thread where you post a picture of yourself, other people do their take, while you pick somebody else to paint. So here’s my in progress portrait of fellow CAer, AG. (I’ve got more in prog shots, but maybe I’ll save ‘em for the final posting.)

Basically, I’m somewhere in the midst of roughly painting over my flats, but not into the more noodling rendering.

You can sneak a peek at the progress shots to date.

I decided to try this technique posted by Bumskee in the ConceptArt threads. Here is the sketch with some of the basic colours blocked in. Below, the finished sketch.

In case you ever actually have these items hanging around in your kitchen, you can make a very yummy risotto with them, provided you also have the arborio rice and some gorgonzola and a few other piffling ingredients. I mostly follow that recipe, but I am pretty freeform when it comes to risotto. So I added leeks, because I like leeks, and because I had half of an old onion (red) waiting to be used, my onion is half red onion, half yellow. I decided I liked the red, because it gave the mixture a little bit of colour. You can optionally sautee the leek and onion with a little garlic, but I don’t recommend more than two or three garlic cloves, since you don’t want to overwhelm the pear. I use two pears worth of pears. And for the cheese part, I did some parmesan–what I had left from the last time I made risotto–and probably a quarter cup of gorgonzola crumbles. Again, not totally sure, because I just sorta throw stuff at the pot. Spices: freshly ground pepper, parsley, a pinch of basil. (Majoram also works nicely, but I didn’t use it this time.)

Anyways, how I do this:

Dice pears. Caramelize pears. Once they are browning at the edges, but still goldeny in the middle, toss in the leeks, red onion, and garlic. (Don’t wait too long. You don’t want squishy pear.) Add more butter. Sautee. Once leeks and red onion are softened, remove mixture. Sautee yellow onion in butter. Add risotto rice. Add broth. Stir a lot. Probably stir on and off for about 25 minutes. Keep adding broth whenever you can see too much of the rice. (You will probably go through about five cups of broth.) When rice is a little al dente but not too (25 minute mark approximately), I add the caramelised pears and sauteed leeks and red onion. Then I add my parmesan, then I add gorgonzola, then I add the spice mixture I put to the side. Then I stir it all, dish it up, and garnish with pear slices.