ABOUT

Crosby Charles Konemann

Started: early Dec15
Finished: 13Feb16
Paper: Just a sketchbook that I had purchased from Barnes and Noble. The book has no details so I don’t really know the paper details.

Crosby was my first drawing.

I hadn’t ever thought that I had a creative bone in me. I was doing a lot of travelling between Australia and the USA for work. Whilst in Wichita I go to Barnes and Noble and the Starbucks they have in the store, just to get away from the four walls of a hotel. I had been spending 9 months of my year in hotels.

After a cuppa at Starbucks I look at the books and always end up buying something. On this occasion I bought “You can Draw in 30 Days” by Mark Kistler. I did Technical Drawing at school so understand perspective quite well and had always thought it would be nice to draw better stick figures at least. Due to my frequent flying I have seen all the movies I thought the time on the plane between Sydney and Wichita could be better used doing some of the lessons in the book. Alas, I decided to learn to draw.

Head down I got through to Day 16 and thought “heck I am drawing better than the examples in the book”. Here is my Day 4 effort of a Tissue Box that I had placed on the deck in front of me.

I was at a local café, The Jazz Apple in Glenbrook, with my daughter and her husband Dave and decided to try my hand at drawing them. Dave worked but my drawing of Laura didn’t look anything like her. So I decided that maybe all I needed was to learn some techniques and I might be doing something half reasonable.

A bit of a search around the internet and I came across Darrel Tank of the Five Pencil Method. I did a couple of his lessons on line on YouTube. The subject of these lessons on portraiture was a baby, head only, and I thought why not use my own grandkids as a subject. So I grabbed this photo of Crosby and away I went.

Well, blow me away I can actually reproduce people quite well it would seem and here is Crosby.

My first ever attempt at a drawing in all reality. This photo was taken on our deck at home.

I cropped the photo to focus on his face and the upper part of his body and I guess to reduce the level of background detail to include in the drawing.

As this was the first drawing I did I wasn’t all that particular about the paper that I was using although I did think it would be alright. The paper I used was just a sketching book I got from Barnes and Noble. I don’t have any details other than that.

I have since bought some better paper and I think it is helping my drawing quite a bit.

I can’t recall struggling too much with any real components of the drawing. I had no idea really what I was doing so being able to reproduce a basic likeness was fantastic for me. I look at the outcome now and would wish to file that first one in my portfolio and do the whole thing again.

Probably the biggest issue I had doing the drawing was that as I was doing most of the drawing on aircraft whilst travelling between Sydney, Dallas and Wichita I ended up forgetting to check the seat pocket on QF7 when I disembarked in Dallas on my way to Wichita. So I left my first attempt at this portrait on the plane.

I was lucky enough to be travelling in business class as I had to go up to Wichita for the Monday and Tuesday and return to Australia for the Thursday and Friday, I then I had to return to Wichita on the Friday once more. The aircraft I returned to Sydney on the Tuesday was the same aircraft and the same crew as the trip up to Dallas. They remembered me and my drawing so looked high and low but couldn’t find anything unfortunately.

So I had to start the drawing all over again. So in reality I guess this is my second drawing as I lost the first one. I don’t think the first one was any better than the second one or that I got a better sense of being able to do anything better on the second one with the new opportunity.

I have since finished this portrait. I had it framed professionally with good quality matting and glass. I gave this to my grandson Crosby for his second birthday.