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Some shopped dabblings from the sketchbook. Nothing to see here. Move along.

Knights are cool. Vittore Carpaccio’s Portrait of a Knight (left) looks a bit wimpy in the real painting, so I decided to buff him up a little bit here. Botticelli’s Athena and Centaur (right) is a graphic painting, like most of his works, and makes for good source material if you want to draw from some renaissance material.

Getting back into the Rapidograph groove with some knights. Pietro Perugino’s St. Michael (left) and another sampling from the same Boticelli, The Madonna Enthroned With Six Saints (right), sampled a couple posts ago.

Weirdies. Something about this old book Art Treasures of the Uffizi & Pitti Florence that draws me to draw from some classic paintings from the yesteryears. Must be the old plate printing. Appropriation of a figure in Domenico Veneziano’s The Madonna And Child With Saints (left) and some messed up kid bothering a lady from Fra Filippo Lippi’s The Madonna And Child With Scenes From The Life Of The Virgin (right)from 1452-ish. Madonna hung out with some definite weirdies.

Getting back on the train. Some appropriated Renaissance studies from Sodoma’s St. Sebastian (left) and a selection from Boticelli’s Madonna Enthroned With Six Saints (right).

“Nice!”

“Don’t”

Ah, the sketchbook. Handy little pal. Great for getting all the sillies and shitties out of your system. Bring it with you everywhere you go. Use it often and watch yourself get better. Watch yourself get better to the point were you can purposely draw the shittiest things, but in a good way. Break your skills down.  Elaborate upon them. Create rules in a sketchbook; only Rapidographs, only still-lifes, only colour, etc. Nothing has to mean anything in a sketchbook. Just draw, draw, draw. No one is going to see it but you (unless you’re posting it on a blog), so go wild. It won’t hurt. Try to fill up at least couple a year, unless it’s one of those giant anthology-type sketchbooks, then one will probably do.

I was out rocking the sketchbook jams today and made this weird duo. You can see them more clearly under the Sketchbook section on my website.

More importantly, I’m writing  this to give you a heads up that this coming Wednesday you can find one of my illustrations in The Globe & Mail, more specifically, in the LIFE section. I can’t reveal it until it goes to print, so you’re just going to have to go buy a copy for yourself, or, wait for it to appear online. Soon!