Artisitc Merits

I really want to read these two guys books.


https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/jan/09/escape-from-mariupol-how-one-ukrainian-soldier-fled-the-azovstal-steelworks-against-the-odds

{{ Sketch from my break at work last night}}

That one looks familiar, did you sketch this scene before?

{{{ no, but it's loosely based on this photo of Romania-



I just googled on my phone 'countryside scenery' and picked something I liked and thought I could do a quick sketch of in the 10-15 mins I had available on my break (heavily simplified of course). Plus after bunging in the rough positions of fence, road and main building my battery died, so after that was just making stuff up. }}

Wait, you just dropped two bombshells.

A. You did that sketch in only 15 minutes (!) That's jaw dropping enough, but...

B. You are using a CELL PHONE.

I thought you were dead set against cell phones.  Seems you got caught in their grip.  Once they have you, they never let you go.

{{ Bombshell B not so much a bombshell, it's the works mobile, I have to have it on me through the night shift for emergencies, I use it to google pictures to draw at 3am! I personally still don't use one and never shall!
As to the tie it took, well few pointers its quick- its small! Its sitting on a keyboard there and only goes from half way along the caps lock key to 'k', the top third of the picture is nothing at all, which certainly saves time! And most of the rest apart from the building is pure suggestion, there's no detail on anything, it's just a few hasty lines to give the suggestion of trees and bushes and stuff, the viewer is doing the bulk of the heavy lifting. }}}

You sell yourself short. There's a LOT of detail in there. Look at the weeds along the fence; look at how the fence darkens with distance, the textured shadowing in the trees and mountains. I would assert that most people who are practiced enough to actually draw what they see (no mean feat, that) would still take an hour to draw it.

There's loads of practice behind your 15 minute sketch.

{{ drawing is, like many other hand orientated skills like carpentry, or sculpting, a process of learning a whole bunch of tricks and techniques that give a reasonable end result but are not as time consuming as they may appear. After all this is why in the past to be an artist you apprenticed with an artist- what you were learning were all those shortcuts, all those tricks of perspective and shading that look impressive but are surprisingly easy to achieve. So yes, there's a few decades practise behind it, but practising how to cheat!}}

I wonder if you get Bob Ross's Joy of Painting on your side of the pond?  It's all about painting, and all little secrets to quickly paint a nature scene in less than half an hour.  The guy is mesmerizing (or was, he's dead now).

Most episodes are behind a paywall, let's see if non USA can see this happy little episode:

{{ Oh yeah Bob Ross, legend, used to watch him as a kid, he used to be on our tv late afternoons as I recall. A happy painter with his happy little trees!  He's a great example of what I mean, you don't need detail, you just need to suggest it. The viewer does the rest for you. And of course his whole style is to show you all those little tricks and shortcuts.}}

I didnt know he passed away, I read somewhere he hated his hair and wanted to get a hair cut but, wasnt "allowed" because it was iconic to him.

Maybe more recently. He of course chose to perm his hair after leaving the army so he wouldn't have to style it. I can see getting sick of it after a few years.