This week’s crop of daily sketches were a challenge to complete, because I’m on a deadline for another big drawing project (more on this in later posts). So once again, I reverted to late night, bleary-eyed drawing. But one big plus is I finally bought a proper art scanner for the other project and used it for my journal drawings too – sorry, iPhone, but what a resolution difference!

The prompts were to draw:

• The condiments on a diner or casual restaurant table – Worked with monochromatic painting to get the values on this sketch.

Diner Condiments

• Something with numbers – I was watching a news story about our Parliament when the inspiration to draw the Peace Tower and its clock (numbers, right?) came to me. Wonky as all get-out, but fun – I had no idea about the sculpted water spigots up top.

Peace Tower

• A travel memory – I added the memory to the drawing.

A Giacometti Encounter

• Something under water – Near the Italian resort town of Portofino, in a beautiful bay, is the Abbey of San Fruttuoso. And in the bay beneath the tranquil waters is a large bronze statue of Jesus, placed there in 1954 to commemorate divers and others who have lost their lives at sea. You can take a small boat out to the site and on a still day, you can see it… or arrange to dive to it.

Christ of the Abyss
San Fruttuoso, Italy

• Something you look up at from below – This drawing prompt turned up in the same week our watercolour class was painting 3-point perspective scenes (worm’s eye or bird’s eye views). Luckily I had already chosen a number of my photos to paint from, and this one ended up in my daily drawing journal. The long staircase up the hill between (what seems like) two leaning buildings dramatically frames the Basilica Saint Michel of Menton at the top.

Menton Staircase

Thanks for stopping by and thanks for the conversations, too!