Art – Page 3 – Snip, Burn, Solder Blog

Sketch of the Week: A Generic Attractive Woman (Week 5, Jan 27 2025)

My son picked this as the Sketch of the Week, noting that he liked the angle of her head, and that it came out well overall.

A pencil sketch of a generic pretty woman (it was supposed to be Anya Taylor-Joy. *sighs*)

He wasn’t alone. Folks glancing at my journal last week were invariably drawn to that sketch, and thought it “came out well.” I tend to disagree, which makes for sort of an instructive example:

This is a good sketch, but a poor likeness of the model. I was working from this image of Anya Taylor-Joy:

A black and white portrait of Anya Taylor-Joy with her hand on her neck. She is wearing a dark dress.

There’s a slightly broad roundness to ATJ’s face, that coupled with her fine features is vaguely Fae and unnatural. It’s that presence that leads to her being strong in the roles where she’s strong.

I caught something of her gesture and posture in my sketch, and maybe even some of the energy in her hair, but I captured none of that changeling quality that makes Anya Taylor-Joy immediately identifiable as Anya Taylor-Joy (hell, the AI I’ve been monkeying with to try and automate alt text for images—and which more often than not sort faceplants—correctly identified this black-and-white photograph as Anya Taylor-Joy; I think the above alt text for that image is the first time I’ve ever used the AI generated attempt without modification).

I tried for Anya Taylor-Joy, and ended up with a rough approximation of a Nagle Woman—given my background and age, that isn’t surprising. Heck, it isn’t even bad: I sorta like Nagle, and the sketch at the top of this page is leagues ahead of where I started a year or two back.

It’s not bad, but it isn’t Anya Taylor-Joy, either.

Sketch of the Week: A Four-Point Buck Watches the Inauguration (Week 4, Jan 21 2025)

This is one of those situations where the title says it all: my mom was watching the inauguration, livid, and looked up to see this fella watching alongside her. I’m sharing it because my son found it funny, but the sketch itself didn’t sit will with me. In reality, the deer looked gravely concerned about the future of democracy, where-as in my sketch he comes off as mildly outraged that humans have once again stepped in it and tracked it all over the rug. I imagine that maybe this was a case of the artist’s feelings tainting the clarity of his vision.

Anyway, I included the quick thumbnail I sketched afterward in the bottom left, because I felt like it more faithfully captured his true posture in Mom’s snapshot. That said, he still looks pretty angry. Or maybe not angry, precisely, just disappointed. He expected us to Be Best, and we fell far short. Sorry, m’man.

A couple pencil sketches of a four-point buck (male deer) looking in through my mom's living room window.

Sketch of the Week: Skull House (Week 3, Jan 17, 2025)

Here’s my son’s note, when I asked for his Sketch-of-the-Week input (every week I send him a picture of the previous week’s spread from my journal, showing that week’s five sketches, and ask for his feedback):

“Gotta be the skull house with the ladder…Something about the perspective gives me the sense that the skull is growing in size, or moving towards the viewer. I don’t know if it’s the best composition [of the week] but it’s the best vibes.”

A pencil sketch of a little girl climbing a rough-hewn wooden ladder into the nose-opening of a skull house cliff dwelling.

The reference here is a snapshot of my daughter climbing a ladder into some of the historic cliff dwellings at Bandelier National Monument in New Mexico, plus a lot of public domain pics of old skulls I found on Wikimedia.

Personally, my pick for this week would have been this little girl I saw at the Cross Country Ski Headquarters near Roscommon, MI last weekend. I think of her as “Lil Puffball”:

On reflection, my son is right. I like Lil Puffball not because it’s a great sketch, but because it’s one I had to finish in just a minute or two, because I was working from life, not pics on my phone. Given the constraint, it represents big progress for me, in terms of craft. But that doesn’t mean it’s fun to look at, and I think it’s maybe lower on emotional content (to the viewer) than I’d like. When you look at Lil Puffball, you aren’t feeling what I felt looking at her. But when you look at Skull House, you get what I’m getting at. Also, Skull House is the first time (I think?) that I’ve really tried to bring together disparate reference images in order to really take a stab at fiction in a sketch.

For what it’s worth, it’s is cold as fuck here in Michigan (it was negative when I woke up, and mostly single digits all day), and it’s subzero where my son’s at (he goes to college just about as far into Michigan’s Upper Peninsula as you can get). He has to go around in this get up:

…because this is what his campus looks like:

A view of the frozen channel running between Houghton and Hancock, MI.

(Yeah, that’s a frozen canal running between two parts of Lake Superior, from when this part of the state was mostly only good for Copper and lumber.)

Sketch of the Week: Barbaric Yawp! (Week 2, Jan 6, 2025)

The Sketch of the Week for week #2 of 2025 ain’t much but it’s better than the rest (I largely focused on profiles last week, which are harder than you’d think).

But I’m selling this little guy short saying it that way; I actually really like how he came out. As a gesture drawing, I feel like I got the gesture I was after.

A pencil sketch of a little man loosing a barbaric "yawp!"

The reference was a snapshot my son took of me clowning around on a frozen waterfall when we were down in Santa Fe:

A photo of some foolish ld jackass (me) clowning around on a frozen waterfall near Santa Fe, NM.

For those who like references, I realize I’ve increasingly begun to resemble this poem, and maybe the poet.

Sketch of the Week: Santa Fe (Dec 30, 2024)

My wife is a teacher and both my kids are in school (one in middle, one at Michigan Tech), so we took a long family trip together over the Winter Break, riding Amtrak from West Michigan to Albuquerque, and then driving from there to Santa Fe.

I’ve been to Santa Fe before, but this was the first time that I really noticed the clear, sharp quality of the light (probably because it’s such a stark goddamned contrast to Michigan’s wintertime “It was evening all afternoon; It was snowing And it was going to snow” perpetual mudlight).

My God, that light! Those goddamned shadows! Anywhere you went in Santa Fe, it was like you could have cut each shadow out of black felt and pasted it down. If you’re trying to get your eye and head and hand around tone and value and light and shadow, it’s the place to be. My son favored this sketch for that reason:

Pencil sketch of the chimney and side of an adobe building in Santa Fe with stark shadows.

Here’s a bonus: A watercolor sketch of the evening view from outside the state park yurt we were staying in (gas heat, no water, and only $60/night!)

It’s a quick little thing, around 1″x2″, mostly to test out these watercolors my brother-in-law made for me from scratch for the holidays! (He’s mostly known for his knives, but is currently on hiatus from handmaking custom jobs. Folks can still buy his designs that are mass produced by bigger companies; I’ve been carrying one of his Feist front-flippers, and love it for everyday use. Such a great knife!)

small watercolor sketch of the evening view from outside a yurt in New Mexico near Santa Fe

Sketch of the Week: Conan(ii) (Dec 18, 2025)

A pencil sketch of Conan the Barbarian, based on a still from the 1982 film

My son advised I share this sketch of Conan the Barbarian (taken from the “What is Best in Life…?” scene—video at the bottom of this post) because I could also share my first stab at it, from back in September:

Sketch of Conan seated and delivering his "What is best in life…?" speech.

Here is the actual still I was working from:

A still image from the movie Conan the Barbarian, showing Conan (Arnold Schwarzenegger) seated, shirtless, and surrounded by other figures in a dimly lit setting. Candles are burning in front of them. Conan is delivering his "What is best in life…?" speech.

Why is my latest sketch better than my first stab?

Well, first off, I’ve loosened up on my fixation with line, and leaned more deeply into value. Like, honestly: there is no such thing as a “nose” as a discrete part of the face. It isn’t like the eye. The thing we call a “nose” is this notional region in the middle of the face defined by areas of shadow and highlight. Every time you use a line anywhere in drawing a nose, you end up with something cartoonish. Lips have largely the same issue: unless someone is wearing pretty heavy makeup, then the lip really isn’t delineated in the real world nearly so sharply as it is in our minds. In my latest sketch I used almost no lines on Conan’s face; I built them up using layers of graphite, and also paid attention to the levels of value within each value, making more intermediate stages. It helped to think of it in this manner: that I’m “building up” the face, not “drawing” it.

But it’s more than that, because I’ve also (just barely) gotten smarter about composition. The first drawing got problematic because I tried to capture the entire scene as shown in that frame. This entire film is full of beautifully composed shots, every frame worth its own Frank Frazetta oil painting. I didn’t have the space for that on the page, nor the skill in my hand and eye. In the newer sketch my reach doesn’t nearly exceed my grasp so terribly: I had room to capture just seated Conan at the proper scope and detail, and I did so.

And, finally, I didn’t shy away from the awkward face Conan is making in my screen grab; I leaned into the awkwardness (rather than trying to smooth it out and glass it over), and as such got much closer to capturing something sort of lovely and ineffable in his posture. I don’t know what that is, but I see it more and more often in my more recent sketches, when I get them right. It’s present in the lame buck, and the close-up of the thinking man’s gorilla, and the Florida turtle. In my head, I think of it as capturing the dignity of the thing in the world, being just exactly what it is.

Anyway, this is the final Sketch of the Week for 2024. Thanks for playing along!

Sketch of the Week: The Lame Buck (December 10, 2024)

A lame buck has been taking shelter around my mom’s place, and she snapped a picture that she shared with my sisters and me. He’d maybe been nicked by a car? Not bloody, but he had one leg he wasn’t using at all, just hanging limp, and was mostly spending his time bedded down. When she took the picture I used as the reference here, she was probably only about a yard away; he was right outside her TV room window.

What really struck me was how visible his ribs were. I didn’t imagine this story ending well for the buck, but a few days after I drew this she saw a group of bucks come and visit him, and then they all left together. This guy was still hobbling, but he was using all four legs and keeping up with his brethren.

The day after that I slow cooked an entirely unrelated buck’s shoulder for my wife’s extended family, who all came to visit for a day. #PureMichigan

Sketch of the Week: The Thinking Man’s Gorilla (December 3, 2024)

Due to a split decision/ranked-choice vote, this week’s sketch is the thinking man’s gorilla (based on a blurry snapshot from the Columbus Zoo):

My son favored either the gorilla sketch (above) or the sketch of my wife in a bucket hat (below) Meanwhile, I preferred either the gorilla (above) or this sketch of my wife based on a photo we took this past Halloween (way down below). Thus, despite an abundance of qualified women, we wound up with a gorilla on top. Democracy is an imperfect system.

an aloof woman in a bucket hat — *my wife in a bucket hat*

a smiling woman who likes her bangs — *my wife humoring her husband*

Sketch of the Week: Little Florida Turtle in a Tank (Nov 26, 2024)

A pencil sketch of a small semi-aquatic Florida turtle with a spiky shell and quiet dignity.

I saw this little guy in a display tank at a ranger station in Apalachicola, Florida. To me it was a “fancy slider” (in Michigan you mostly see painted turtles–which tend to be big–and red-eared sliders, which are this guy’s size, but with a smooth shell). But apparently he’s really a Barbour’s map turtle. Like the sliders and painted turtles I’m used to, he has extremely pretty yellow pipping all along his body (which I didn’t even try to capture). What I was really taken with was that spiky shell, and his tiny dignity.

A photograph of a small Barbour's map turtle in Apalachicola, Florida.

Sketch of the Week: Lake Michigan Sunset (Nov 20, 2024) plus a Thanksgiving treat

Both kids unanimously voted for this sketch, which is based on a photo I took in the summer of 2020:

A pencil sketch of a beach scene at sunset. Small figures are visible in the foreground.

My kids are the small figures playing in the surf near the middle of the image, but that isn’t why they chose it; they both really liked the play of the light on the water and the shadows on the beach.

I have to admit, I’m pleased with how the light on the water came out, too.

As a bonus, I’ve got another sketch from the joke that featured the meditating warrior squirrel from last week. Here he battles a vicious wild turkey:

A pencil sketch showing a noble warrior-monk squirrel samurai closing in to do battle with a vicious wild turkey.