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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!

Merry Xmas! Please beware of “suicide cables”!🎄🔌🙅‍♀️

ANNUAL REMINDER:

‘Tis the season to hang your Xmas lights—and, for many people, to hang one strand backwards and instead of pulling it down, head to the hardware store in search of an “adapter” that is colloquially referred to as a “suicide cable.”

DO NOT DO THIS!

I’m not kidding around. If you don’t kill yourself with such an arrangement, you can easily kill some hapless person who stumbles across your work later.

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):

A pencil sketch of a thoughtful gorilla

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.

Sketch of the Week: Creep (Nov 14, 2024)

A pencil sketch of a j-horror-style female figure lurching toward teh viewer, long, stringy hair obscuring her face.

This week my son was entirely undecided; he liked everything. I was also pretty pleased, so here’s the full spread for the week:

A sketchbook spread with five sketches: a lake-side landscape with heaped cumulus clouds, an upset young woman sitting with her arms crossed, a meditating fat man, a lurching j-horror zombie-like ghoul woman, and a fleeing man looking over his shoulder.

I did the creep and her victim on different days, and wasn’t as pleased with how he came out, which is why he’s cropped out above. Both of those figures are based on reference photos from The Pose Archives, which I adore.

Tuesday is Yú in a scene from Karuto / Cult.

Monday is a composite of a stretch of beach north of Fisherman’s Island State Park (FUN FACT: most of it isn’t an island; it’s the lakeshore, and may now be entirely inaccessible due to climate change) with some cumulus clouds in my neighborhood. I’m not anywhere near where I want to be with clouds yet.

Wednesday is from a stock photo that’s been kicking around my phone for ages; I used him as a model for a six-limbed samurai squirrel back in June:

A pencil sketch of a squirrel-like warrior monk sitting cross-legged with its large, bushy tail forming a circle behind it.

The squirrel was part of a joke either with my son or with my mom and sisters; I can’t really recall how I got there. A lot of what I do is the result of off-handed jokes gone too far.

Sketch of the Week: Egret in Apalachicola (Nov 4, 2024) and an Oaxacan Dancer

A pencil sketch of an egret in shallow waters on the Gulf of Mexico, reflected in concentric ripples.

This is based on a snapshot I took last winter, while visiting the Florida panhandle’s “Forgotten Coast” (which I understand is now its totally obliterated coast, at least in some of the parts we were in). Here’s the reference photo:

A black-and-white photo of an egret in shallow waters on the Gulf of Mexico, reflected in concentric ripples.

I won’t be shocked if someone tells me that isn’t an egret; I’m not much for identifying what I see.

Anyway, the egret wasn’t my son’s vote for this week. He liked this Oaxacan dancer in the big fancy hat:

A pencil sketch of a young woman wearing a large hat and necklace. She is a dancer from Oaxaca, Mexico.

He was particularly pleased by her clothes. I like her, too.

Sketch of the Week: Strip-mall Sandhill Crane (Oct 29, 2024)

Pencil sketch of a crane standing in water with tall grass in the background.

Where I live in Michigan, there are a lot of wetlands. As a rule, when you build something that creates a lot of impermeable surface (like a warehouse or parking lot), you have to create someplace for the water to go, so it doesn’t strain our storm water systems or deliver a concentrated flow of surface pollutants to the rivers.

In practice, that means that lots of rust-belt Michigan office buildings and strip malls (i.e., the natural environment where I grew up, riding skateboards and bikes and playing tag and setting off fireworks and playing with slingshots) have little scrubby neglected wetlands next to them. These can become remarkably healthy and resilient little ecosystems all their own. I saw this little guy (who I’m 90% sure was a juvenile sandhill crane) while sitting in the car outside a Target waiting for my wife. If you could zoom out on this sketch a click or two, you’d see an Applebees and a freeway and an abandoned Chuck E Cheese—the many vibrant biomes of Southeast Michigan!

I believe sandhill cranes were endangered in Michigan when I was a kid. They were certainly a rare and exciting sight. Now they’re getting to be almost a pest species in some places. Every spring they take it into their head that a section of paved bike trail in Island Lake Park belongs to them and attack the unwary. A pal of mine got a black eye from one. #PureMichigan

My son was really excited by how the reflections came out on this one, as am I. Water is really, really hard to unsee enough to capture it in graphite.