sketchbook

Today's sketchbook:

The mandible from the Kebara skeleton, top; Qafzeh 3, bottom.

Today's sketchbook:

Liang Bua 1 skull, lateral view.

What did you think it was?

Today's sketchbook:

I've been sketching some studies of the Ardi CT skull reconstruction.

Today's sketchbook:

This is a reconstruction based on the Old Man of La Chapelle-aux-Saints.

Today's sketchbook:

KNM-WT 15000.

Today's sketchbook:

Dmanisi D2700. It's been a while since I posted many sketchbook pages, but I'll fill in the gaps over the next few weeks.

Today's sketchbook:

This is a preliminary sketch for an oil rendering.

Today's sketchbook:

It's softball season.

Today's sketchbook:

Three skulls. These are not to scale -- in reality, Sangiran 17 is quite a lot bigger than the other two.

Today's sketchbook:

I regard this one as unfinished, but I very much like the way the eyes have turned out, so I cropped it. Watercolors and gouache on an Academie pad.

Today's sketchbook:

More little sketches. This is a famous pair. Richard Leakey and Alan Walker used KNM-ER 3733 (Homo erectus) and KNM-ER 406 (Australopithecus boisei) to illustrate the coexistence of at least two hominid species around Lake Turkana in the Early Pleistocene.

Today's sketchbook:

A girl from India, via Flickr. Watercolors and watercolor pencils on pastel paper. It was a work in progress, and then stopped progressing, so I've moved on to other things.

This is off the usual topics, but I mentioned once how poorly colors were coming out when I save sketchbook pieces as JPG. They look great in Photoshop, but saving as JPG mysteriously dulls all the colors. For the Termineander, I overcorrected the colors and got acceptable results.

But I wanted to point to a post on Viget Inspire, The Mysterious “Save For Web” Color Shift. As with all things art, many people have noticed the problem ahead of me. The simplest solution is to set draft view to "Monitor RGB" (the lowest common denominator for the web) and forget the wonderful saturated colors that Photoshop managed to automatically get out of your scans. Sigh.

Today's sketchbook:

You might guess: I'm working on illustrating the lactase persistence story.

Today's sketchbook:

The Termineander

I took this on at the suggestion of a reader.

Yes, it's a Geico caveman morphed into the ultimate robot assassin from the future. Well, you were wondering how they got all those cranial wounds, weren't you?

Yes, by drawing a robot in colored pencils, I have become the ultimate high school art geek.

No, I don't suppose "Neandernator" works quite as well.

Today's sketchbook:

I need some teeny ink sketches of some crania. This one started out too big, so I had to shrink it for a second attempt.

Today's sketchbook:

Actually, yesterday's. Goodwin and I were painting outside. Here's a watercolor sketch of him painting. The girls' school had a Blackhawk helicopter visit, landing right outside. It flew over the house bound for its base, and I caught Goodwin looking up with a colored pencil sketch.

Today's sketchbook

Kenneth Branagh is appearing on Mystery this month in the British production of "Wallander." I love the way they light him throughout the whole thing -- they balance natural light on one side with artificial on the other, leaving a darkness etching across his face. I suppose they're going for that Ibsen quality for this Swedish detective.

So I had to draw him, although it took a while to find a screenshot. The likeness is not great here, he looks a little like Andy Serkis. I might try again with a different picture because the tones are great, kind of like the silent movie stills I've been drawing.

4B, which is now worn down to a tiny nub that Goodwin thinks is his size.

Today's sketchbook:

A chital, drawn with a Pigma Micron 03.

Today's sketchbook:

Another sketch with the grilling charcoal. Goodwin loves to play with egg cartons lately. Not really sure why, but Hot Wheels cars are just about the size of the eggs.

Today's sketchbook:

OK, so I was outside working in the yard, and then I started smoking some meat. You know, pretty much the classic Sunday afternoon in May. So I'm building the fire, and got charcoal all over the work gloves. And I sat down with my sketchbook, and thought, well, I'll draw one of the gloves -- that's a good subject.

I was pretty far into it, too, when I realized, what better way to draw a charcoal-smudged glove, than with charcoal? So this is what you get when you pick up a chunk of charcoal from the grill and start drawing.

That's hardwood charcoal, not that junky sawdust-and-clay stuff that Henry Ford invented. I don't imagine briquettes would be nearly as good for drawing.

Today's sketchbook:

I've been experimenting with some painting, so I haven't had a lot to show from my sketching lately. I started this one before the AAPA meetings, but didn't pick it up again until later. HB and 4B pencil.

Today's sketchbook:

An Agta woman in the Philippines, according to Flickr.

Today's sketchbook:

The kids had a friend over this morning, so we had a little crayon session. Here are the remains of Gretchen's coffee cake. I haven't really tried to work with crayons forever -- it's easy to forget how hard they are to control.

I generally save really poor-quality jpegs for the blog. With the pencil or ink drawings it doesn't make much difference, and I don't mind if they're a little ugly -- I'm paying for the bandwidth, after all. But the crayon scan really loses vibrancy in the jpeg, and I haven't figured out a way to compress it without losing that brightness.

OK, what am I complaining about? It's crayon!

Today's sketchbook:

A girl from Yemen, via Flickr.

4B on Strathmore paper