Reflecting on My Dad

I was never sure what my dad did for a living, because I never got to visit his workplace. He was in mechanical engineering jobs that were either highly technical or top secret.

Once he mentioned that he was in “high vacuum technology.” To my grade-school imagination, that meant he drove around in a giant Hoover vacuum cleaner.

He came home at 5:30 every day. I would wait for him on my red bicycle and ride alongside his car for the last block to our house.

Dad read widely, and he must have had a lot of deep thoughts. But he kept those them mostly locked up inside his head. Maybe I didn’t have enough wit to ask him the right questions to unlock those thoughts.

But also, American dads were probably more remote to their kids in those days than they are now.

He’s been gone now for almost 25 years, and I still think fondly about him. When I clear my throat, I realize I sound exactly like him. I can’t help imagining him riding around on that giant vacuum cleaner.

Painting a Monkey Skull

The Akin Free Library in Pawling, New York is like a time machine that takes you back to a different way of organizing and presenting knowledge about nature.

It's worth a visit, but it's only open Saturdays and Sundays 1:00-4:00d, May - October. Ask to make sure, but it's usually OK to bring stools neat sketch supplies, such as pencil or watercolors.

LWatch this painting bbeing made Here's a link to video

Remote Control Models

When I was a teenager I was obsessed with remote-control airplanes and boats.

 
This is high-school-age me with a Hobie Hawk, a two-servo glider with elliptical dihedral. The kit was invented by Hobart Alter, same guy who created the Hobie catamaran.

It had heavy wing loading, so was a fast flier. But I didn’t fly it much because I lost it in a forest of poison oak while slope soaring in Pescadero.

I also designed and built a flying-wing glider. No tail assembly, just wings. The airfoil changed from a lifting airfoil at the root of the wing to a reverse airfoil at the tips of the swept-back wings. That held the lifting surface at a good angle of incidence. The rudder and elevator controls went through a mechanical mixer on the servo brick that activated the elevons.

This is the kind of thing I thought about in high school during my free time. I’d be standing on the ground, with my imagination soaring 300 feet above me, dreaming what it would feel like to be a red-tail hawk.
My dad was a mechanical engineer, and he would occasionally give me pointers on tools and build techniques.

I also made a tugboat out of pine planks stacked and glued, carved to a hull shape, and fiberglassed over. This one took me all summer to build. The motor was powered by a motorcycle battery. It took some perilous voyages across the chop of the Palo Alto duck pond. It had lights inside and looked pretty realistic at night.

I didn’t know this at the time, but my fascination with scratch-built, remote-controlled airplanes and boats set me up for building the fantasy world of Dinotopia. Making these models helped project my imagination into places. Working for months on a single project gave me an instinct for delayed gratification.

 
There was real peril for the gliders. I once handed the stick to another pilot, inviting him to try flying the wing inverted, and he snapped off both wings by half-looping out of it. Poor guy, he felt so bad. But no problem. I went home, fixed it, and flew on.

 
My dad built his own glider and put a strand of piano wire in the leading edge of the wing “in case of a midair collision.” That day arrived: CRASH! Down went the other guy's plane. But Dad's plane survived. He kind of grinned, but didn't tell the other guy about the piano wire.

Flower Pastels of Laura Coombs Hills

Laura Coombs Hills (1852-1952)

On Substack today, a look at the Life and work of Laura Coombs Hills.

Laura Coombs Hills (1852-1952)

On Substack today, a look at the Life and work of Laura Coombs Hills.

Wikipedia  Laura Coombs Hills

Dark Mirrors

For centuries artist have used darkened mirrors and smoked lenses to help them view a real landscape in simplified tonal values. More on Substack

You're Not Allowed To Imagine Thaat

What are the implications of an AI model that refuses to cooperate? What happens when it tells me that I’m not supposed to imagine something? What if it becomes illegal to imagine something without using a safe-certified AI? More on Substack
 

Drawing Moving Objects

Drawing moving objects is a whole different challenge compared to drawing things that hold still.  Sometimes I like to analyze a common motion such as putting on a jacket by drawing different stages of the action.

Here I'm looking for the long curving lines describing the forms. I draw these with simple, graceful strokes of the sable brush. (from The Artist's Guide to Sketching)

Gilbert Gaul's 'Return Home'

Gilbert Gaul was born in Jersey City, New Jersey in 1855. He studied art at the National Academy of Design in New York and worked as an illustrator for multiple newspapers including the New York Daily Graphic and the New York Herald. 

A young soldier returns to find his boyhood home and hearth in ruins.

Oil painting by Gilbert Gaul in the Birmingham Museum of Art 

Later, he took formal art lessons in Germany and France, where he learned how to paint in the academic method. Gaul is known for his realistic illustrations and paintings of American history, especially military scenes.

Special Delivery

Hope everyone is enjoying the new book. 

I'm curious: What are you working on in your own sketching practice? 

Crash of the Florist Van

This florist van crashed into something jagged, which sliced through it from under the headlight to the side door panel. (Ballpoint pen and gray markers, around 1980.)

This was one of the sketches we couldn't fit into the expanded and remastered edition of "The Artist's Guide to Sketching."