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Monday, February 18, 2013

Jump-Starting the Nemesis


2/18/13 Platinum Carbon ink, watercolor, Stillman & Birn Beta sketchbook
This week’s Urban Sketchers Flickr Group weekly theme, “Sketching Nemesis,” is one that was inspired by my own blog posts about how I have been trying to improve my sketches of cars by forcing myself to draw them regularly. At some point, I made a loose commitment (how’s that for an oxymoron) to sketch at least one car a week. When I read the weekly theme, I remembered that I didn’t sketch a car at all last week and felt a pang of guilt. So I went out this afternoon and sketched four in one composition (and actually several more in the background) to make up for it.
 
But there was a little more to this otherwise mundane sketching adventure. When I sit in my car to sketch, I like to listen to jazz and NPR news on the radio. I was about 40 minutes into my sketch when the radio suddenly died. What the heck…? I started fiddling with the radio knob when – uh-oh. I realized I had left the headlights on, so it wasn’t just my radio that was dead.
 
Fortunately, Allstate Roadside Assistance came to my rescue! And what did I do while I waited for my jump start to come? Finished my sketch, of course, and then sketched some more.

3 comments:

  1. Oh, yes. I did that the first time I went sketching in my car.... Feb 2012! I had both the radio and the heater running but no headlights. It was an old battery.

    So now I listen to my iPod!

    I, too, continued to work on the sketch while I waited for AAA. But the, the battery recovered, I was able to get it started and drove off to get a new battery (after calling AAA to tell them I didn't need help).
    --Kate

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  2. Now you are set for 4 weeks of car sketching. lol Great that you are sketching the cars like you set out to do. Sorry you ran down the battery...that wasn't fun I'm sure. I don't keep my radio on while I sketch for that reason...and now I will definitely not do it.

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  3. Great story, Tina. I find the best way to draw cars is to draw them as shapes and not cars. Otherwise we miss the perspective and foreshortening effects which are significant and we rely too much on our internal 'car image'. Great sketch, by the way.

    Cheers -- Larry

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