The makers of Nomad Brush interviewed me as part of their countdown to Macworld. They make a fantastic brush stylus for painting on touchscreen devices, such as iPads. I’ll be demonstrating drawing with the Nomad on an iPad at their booth at Macworld in San Francisco on Saturday, Jan. 28th and hope some of you can stop by!

Full interview (please comment on the interview website rather than here, thanks!):

nomadbrush.com/wordpress/2012/01/11/countdown-to-macworld…

I spent the morning drawing at the Olmec show at the Legion of Honor in San Francisco, CA, USA – and talking to kids, adult patrons and guards about drawing on my iPod Touch.

It’s a great show and up for less than a month more – I highly recommend a visit to anyone in the area.

I was relieved that they were allowing drawing at this exhibit. They often don’t, which finally got them some negative press recently. It’s a personal grudge of mine. I’ve been in museums literally all over the world and the place I’ve found least interested in supporting actual artists is the deYoung. It is true that in Morocco the guards would occasionally tell us we were taking too long looking at something, based on how long the museum was open and how much of the museum was left to view, but noone else has ever objected to drawing. In Turkey they brought me a chair to sit on and a cup of tea, but that’s another story.

In any event drawing was OK, and I hope to go back and draw some more. I was drawing with my finger on my iPod Touch so the poor guards came over periodically to tell me no photos or no cell phones, but I would patiently explain that I was drawing and show them what I was doing, so it was OK – actually they were quite interested in drawing on the touch screen. One guard noted that it seemed alot more convenient than having to use those stylus things which people were always losing.

There were alot of student groups since it was midday of midweek. which has its pros and cons. Of course I like to see kids in museums and getting introduced to art and everyone was pretty well-behaved- only the teenagers were a bit annoying but it was just inherent in their being teenagers, I think.

Anyway it was fun drawing and talking to various people about how I was drawing – as one patron astutely put it ‘Using the most modern technology to draw some of the most ancient objects’

iPad
Drawing Pad App
60-90 minutes
Freehand from a photo

iPad
Drawing Pad App
<=30 minutes
Freehand from a photo

Today’s portrait is of artist Marine Barbaroux, known on flickr as Miss Embe. I encourage everyone to browse Marine’s wonderful work here: www.flickr.com/photos/miss-embe-sketches/

Photos and other portraits of Marine can be found here: www.flickr.com/groups/portraitparty/discuss/7215762431834…

We’re having a Portrait Party on flickr – more than 200 artists drawing each other! Please visit the Portrait Party at: www.flickr.com/groups/portraitparty/

iPad
Drawing Pad App
<=45 minutes
Freehand from a photo

The line drawings have been fun but it was time for some color!

Please visit John’s imagestream to see his fantastic fayum series, copies of the masters, portraits of primates and more: www.flickr.com/photos/john_bavaro/

We’re having a Portrait Party on flickr – more than 200 artists drawing each other! Please visit the Portrait Party at: www.flickr.com/groups/portraitparty/

Pen on paper/moleskine notebook.
Freehand from a photo.
5.5 X 7 inches.
<=30 minutes.

Today I attempted to draw John Bavaro, an artist whose work I like a great deal. (Please check John’s work here: www.flickr.com/photos/john_bavaro/)

For most of the week contour line drawings were flowing out of me and I had some great photos of John so I just thought la di da I would make a couple nice contour drawings but that’s not how it went. As I kept rejecting pages, I started drawing over them with thicker markers so there are pieces of drawings floating in the middle of other drawings and bleeding back onto other pages and that might be the most interesting thing that happened.

Can’t say there’s any resemblance to John in any of these but it was time to stop for the night- perhaps another time.

We’re having a Portrait Party on flickr – more than 200 artists drawing each other! Please visit the Portrait Party at: www.flickr.com/groups/portraitparty/

iPod Touch
Brushes App
From life/observation
15-20 minutes

Pen on paper/moleskine notebook.
Freehand from a photo.
5.5 X 7 inches.
<=30 minutes.

This is a portrait of Karen Langlie (Wisteriax) and her pigeon Daddy Bird for the Portrait Party. Please check out Karen’s wonderful artwork here: www.flickr.com/photos/pushmeover/

I obviously don’t know enough about feathers and wings; I was not able to fake Professor Plum to my own satisfaction where the photo was not clear enough for the level of detail I was aiming for. Of course I don’t know whether Professor Plum was proud, or even aware, that he was about to become a father…

Pen on paper/moleskine notebook.
Freehand from a photo.
5.5 X 7 inches.
>=30 minutes.

I loved this source photo by Grietje’s 6 year old daughter, and had alot of fun drawing from it. I confess I couldn’t quite make sense of everything going on, on the ceiling through the window, and just made some stuff up.

Please check out Grietje’s great sketches here: www.flickr.com/photos/paulienmaria/

PS I did not see Tim Schorre’s remarkably similar drawing until after I had done this and was posting it to her discussion thread…

Pen on paper/moleskine notebook.
Freehand from a photo.
5.5 X 7 inches.
>=30 minutes.

Thank you to Judy Repke for such a wonderful photo to work from: www.flickr.com/photos/repke-art/5346437072/

She’s not in there yet, but maybe tomorrow….

Pen on paper/moleskine notebook.
Freehand from a photo.
5.5 X 7 inches.
30-45 minutes.

Please check out Judy’s fun drawings: www.flickr.com/photos/jsilverphotographs/

You can find photos and other portraits of her here: www.flickr.com/groups/portraitparty/discuss/7215762504130…