Wednesday, March 26, 2008

Well said...

"To be a schoolmaster is next to being a king. Do you count it lowly employment to imbue the minds of the young with the things of Christ and the best of literature and return them to their homes honest and virtuous persons? In the opinion of fools, it is a humble task; but in fact, it is the noblest of occupations." - Desiderius Erasmus (1466-1536). Learn more about Erasmus here.

Erasmus is buried just 30 minutes from our place. Here I am standing beside his memorial column where he is buried in the cathedral in Basel, Switzerland. Eramus was a great Christian educator.

Watercolor Attempt

A watercolor of the same pen and ink sketch in an earlier post (see below).

I love having time to draw and try watercolor during the Easter break. I'm getting faster at this medium. I find that I get better results if I am less careful and just let the watercolor do its thing.
As you will see this is another version of a pen drawing I did. I wanted to do it one more time, larger, and in color this time. I really like the shadows in this shot. This watercolor is 7x5.5 inches.
A house wall in Eguisheim, France.

Thursday, March 20, 2008

No Greater Love


Selections from John 19
Moleskine Sketchbook
Uniball Signo RT gel 0.38

Post-Easter comments...Now that Easter is over, I thought I would add some additional text to this post. This drawing was a challenge. I have been thinking about how I could depict some aspect of the crucifixion for years. I have been very intimated by the whole concept. The other morning just before rising out of bed, the idea you see above suddenly came to me: to draw the nailed hand of Christ. Again, I was intimidated - this time, not just because of the subject matter, but also because they say that drawing a realistic hand is one of the hardest things to draw well. In the end, I surprised myself at the level of realism I was able to achieve.

I took a digital shot of my own hand for this drawing and then I "beefed it up". While I like the overall effect, there are some things I am not happy with in this drawing. I think Jesus' hand would have been stronger than this one. I also believe it would have been dirtier and more gruesome than I managed to draw. More blood, more cuts, more dirt, more stress.

I love the text on the cross beam - and how it informs me that the Savior literal laid his life down for me. That's amazing love. TS

Sunday, March 16, 2008

Alsacian House

I kinda like the way a sketch looks before shading it.

Below is the same picture after the shading is applied. I used stippling again to make the gradations. I really liked how the sun was hitting this house at just the right angle showing all of the various lines cast by the roof line and shudders.

Naturally, I love these old houses. This is a house in a village in the Alsace wine region of France, not far from where we live. Beautiful part of the world. This was drawn in my moleskine plain paper book. Original size: 5x3.5 inches.

recent doodles

From the pages of my moleskine notebook.

The left side of the page is interesting. I just started making boxes and that's what happened. Those shapes were made over a long period of time. The right side of the page is something I am working on right now. It's scene from a special place in Alsace region of France. I am going to be adding to it. Stay tuned...
Don't you love the creative part of life? Where do these things come from? They come from a creative God who loves to see His children exercising some of his DNA.
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Saturday, March 15, 2008

Swiss Alps

This drawing is from a photo that I took while in Switzerland. I did something unusual with this drawing that I have never done before. I used a technique known as "Stipling" or "Pointillism", which means the drawing is done using nothing but dots. Yes, it's true. Check it out, click on the picture to see an enlargement. I really like the smooth effect you can achieve with dots.

This is a very famous line of mountains whose names are the Eiger (the Ogre), the Moench (the Monk), and the Jungfrau (the Young Woman)- together they are known as the "Top of Europe". Our God is a great God.
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