Here’s an early, slightly different pencil sketch for that painted cover image from a few posts back.

Here’s another Smithson sketch from the archives. Here I had eventual print publication in mind, and was trying to arrive at a b&w style that I liked. And as always trying to draw faster and in a more lively way. I used colored pencil for the linework, with a loose watercolor wash and some gouache highlights. When I finished it I wasn’t that thrilled, but with a few years’ distance it looks okay.

Been reading some P. G. Wodehouse lately. It’s tough to keep from mentally visualizing these characters as Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry.

Taxicabs hurriedly sketched from still frames of North by Northwest. Being folded and jammed in a pocket gives it that hip “crumpled paper” look.

Here’s how the charcoal drawing from last week turned out. Now I have to run out and buy some fixative (and maybe wait for spring so I can spray outside … cough …)

Intermezzo 1, charcoal on paper, 36″ x 33.5″

I decided to take a step back from small-scale and computer stuff and do an old-fashioned charcoal drawing. It’s a blast from the past for me, going back to the work I was doing in and just after art school (I’m even using a box of Utrecht charcoal left over from student days.) This is about 3′ square. The title refers to Brahms’ Intermezzi for piano, which Glenn Gould performed beautifully on this record. I’ll probably keep tinkering with this one for another week and then start on something fresh.

Time for another drawing of Fred MacMurray in Double Indemnity. Would you buy insurance from this character?

(Here’s an earlier sketch based on the same still.)