Mail Truck

 

12/5/22 Maple Leaf neighborhood

Around this time of year, I feel gratitude for mail carriers and other delivery people for keeping all my packages moving, either to others or to myself. During the first COVID holiday season, I especially felt that way because of all the shopping I had done online to stay out of stores. I’m OK now with shopping inside stores, but I’ve gotten so used to the convenience of shopping online that I’m still doing it now as much as I did then. Sketching this mail truck seemed like a good way to express my ongoing appreciation.

Composition notes: Back in March when I actively studied composition for a month, I had gotten into the useful habit of consistently making a thumbnail study before beginning a larger sketch. I continued for quite a while after my 30-day challenge was over, but eventually I got lazy and stopped. This sketch made me realize I should keep doing them. I drew the mail truck first (and it’s a good thing I did, because the carrier returned and drove off before I was done, but I had blocked in enough to finish), then started filling in everything I could see around it (see uncropped version at bottom of post). That’s when I realized that most of the details I drew weren’t important to the story nor beneficial to the composition. All I needed was enough to show context.

Thumbnail made retroactively.

Retroactively, I made a thumbnail to force myself to think about how I should have cropped it. Even as I drew the rectangular-shaped box, I thought the composition was a landscape shape. The box got smaller and smaller until I found the tightly composed square I wanted.

Another challenge of this sketch was the ground. Though I often color dark shadows on streets, I typically do not color the pavement. But I had to darken the street to show the bits of dirty, slushy snow still hanging around. It made me realize how rarely I have the opportunity to sketch snow on pavement.

Everything I drew.