Sideburns Fish and Trees

I've been busy working on a couple of pieces lately, but there was time for sketching warm-ups, and more importantly, impulsive sketches. Here are three pages from the old travelling sketchbook.

This was done waiting for paint to be mixed at the paint store. I had a Prismacolor color pencil (black) in my backpack, and I felt it was time to try it out. The poor thing takes a light touch to use, and not waste away, but alas, my hand didn't care, and soon I was working a blunt end on the sketchbook paper. Nevertheless, the waxy stuff didn't stop me from rendering the heck out of this face, which I don't know where it came from. I thought sideburns, and a smile. The eyes are off, but I didn't care. I was having fun trying make the waxy stuff look like something on paper. Of course,  my friends did tell me to use a light touch, after the fact. I'll remember for the next time, but I think I'll be using them for gesture drawing, or strict coloring.

I was helping out my brother-in-law with his PC. Too much Facebook on Internet Explorer can confuse the heck out of that browser. The load of "helpful" tool-bars, and unwanted little apps that I found was too much. I was surprised it didn't take much wrangling to clean-up and get back his Windows Vista machine (shiver) back in order. I sat in front of his aquarium to draw while some maintenance was running. That was enough time to sketch part of one of his little castles and a "relatively" monstrous fish. The little buggers won't stay still, will they?

And finally, I got to sketch, and render this tall tree at the park, while my daughter played at the jungle gym with her Monday friends. I say Monday, because these kids only visit the premises when their father and uncle are playing basketball with their friends, once a a week. My daughter's close friend didn't make it, so she kept to the jungle gym area, and I was able to spend plenty of time looking at my subject, and trying to catch all of the visible branches possible. The tree is big, and since I wanted to draw some of that bark texture, I only included the bottom half of the tree. which was basically without leaves. This is my favorite of the three sketches tonight. There's definitively something calming about sketching nature, no doubt.
Well, that will be all for today. I still have to ink some more, and the way I enjoy it, the next impulsive sketches may be in 2 or 3 days. Hope you liked these. Thanks for visiting, and have a great art time!