Roadwork

Some drawings from recent days of construction vehicles and equipment. I love drawing this stuff, because A) What do these things do? Some are obvious, like a bulldozer, but even they have all these pipes and tubes and hoses and attachments that make you wonder how it all works. B) They are a really complex arrangement of lines and shapes and a fun challenge to decipher and depict it all. You may think all these construction devices are just blocks, like a Tonka toy, but in fact they are full of graceful curves and complex shapes intersecting in oblique tangents.


I drew this in DUMBO. I'm not precisely sure what it does, but a contractor at the site said it was "for drilling. Like for water." Are they drilling for aquifers in Brooklyn?

A manual steamroller, I guess.

Naptime in a bulldozer. South Street Seaport. Lots of construction there, still rebuilding from Sandy.

Bulldozer with some sort of attachment in front, for lifting heavy stuff, I guess.

Ballerina

I wasn't at the ballet, but the model this particular day was trained in ballet. Unfortunately, I didn't catch her name. She was a pretty great model, especially for this session, which was an anatomy class. Like many dancers, she was muscular but very lean and, of course, very flexible, which made observing her musculature very clear and easy.

May The Fourth Be With You

It's Star Wars Day!

   

IRON MAN

The new Iron Man movie opens today. I probably won't get a chance to see it until next week, but I'm pretty excited for it. I never cared much about Iron Man in the comics, but I've liked the movies a lot, mostly due to Robert Downey Jr.'s performance.

One thing I did always like about Iron Man was the way his armor was drawn back in the sixties by Don Heck and Jack Kirby. Later renditions of the suit featured sculpted musculature, which often made him look like he was just wearing painted-on spandex like the rest of the superheroes. The original versions were bulky and barrel-chested. They were also covered with bolts and rivets. It really looked like a guy in a suit made of metal cans. More recent versions really play up the tech that would be involved with such a suit, and have lots of parts and joints. It looks cool, but it's hard to draw.


The Iron Man suit was in constant flux in the early years, before settling on a streamlined version that lasted from the late 1960's through the 1980's. I'm partial to this version, with the face-plate with the pointy ends sticking up and the grill over his mouth. I also liked the little transitor-radio-like antenna he had on his shoulder. Who needs wi-fi?

Another thing I liked about the older depiction was the way you could see his eyeballs behind his mask. I just discovered that there was in fact a rationale for it . . .

Watch out, Mr. Doll!

I also liked how lo-fi his armor was. I'm sure at the time this seemed space-age, but today it's amusing to see how proud Tony Stark was of his armor that ran on magnets, transistor radios,  gyroscopes, and batteries.

Also note how much storage he's built into his suit, including a first aid kid into his boot. That Tony Stark thinks of everything!

I started my Iron Man sketch in pencil, and then inked and colored it in Photoshop. Here's the earlier stages:

Bali Part 2

More of my sketches from Bali, mostly from the southern area of Jimbaran.

View from the balcony of our hotel in Ubud. Pen and ink and experimenting with watercolor pencils. Not very successful, I think, because I didn't know what I was doing with those pencils, and it's been forever since I've done any work in watercolor. And I was never great at watercolor in the first place.

Landscape from the private beach at the resort in Jimbaran. All watercolor pencils, more successful, I think.

And finally on the way home. Layover at Chicago O'Hare Airport, after about 20 hours in the air.

Bali

Some more drawings from my recent trip to Asia. These are from the town of Ubud, considered the cultural center of Bali. The area is full of artists and craftsmen, and there are traditional dance performances every night at the temples.


                                        Detail of the rooftop of our hotel.

 

 

Statue at the Ubud Palace

Between our hotel and the town was the Monkey Forest Road, which is exactly what it sounds like.

Quick sketches from a performance of the Ramayana Ballet, performed at the beautiful Water Palace. It was one of the traditional forms of Balinese dance known as Legong, with an all-female gamelan musical band. These are all very quick sketches, or course, and only suggest at the elaborateness of the costumes.

Tree and shrine at our hotel

 

This guy just had a great moustache.

 

Singapore

Recently we went to Singapore and Bali for two weeks. It was only the second time I've been overseas and my first trip to Asia.

This is a statue on Sentosa Island of the "merlion," the ancient mythic symbol of the Singaporean peoples. Actually, it's not ancient. It was created by the Singapore Tourism Board in 1964. This statue stands about 121 feet tall. To get a sense of scale, there's an observation platform in the merlion's mouth.

These are of the Sultan Mosque, from the Arab Street area.

One of the kookiest and most interesting spots in Singapore is Haw Par Villa, a sort of amusement park created by the owner of the company that makes Tiger Balm. Most of the place features statues and dioramas of Chinese mythology, especially lurid, explicit depictions of the Ten Courts of Hell. But there was also a couple of these cute Tiger Balm mascot statues. They look like they're circa 1960s.

We stayed with our friends at a fancy residential complex. This was the community clubhouse by the pool.

The Gardens by the Bay, as seen from the top of the Singapore Flyer, a giant ferris wheel. The two oblong buildings are giant greenhouses, and those structures to the right of it are "supertrees," giant vertical gardens. Beyond it you can see dozens of ships waiting to come into port.