Dad and I shared a love of Lamy pens. He brought this particular yellow one to Canmore a number of years ago when he came to visit me and left it behind as a loaner when the nib of my black Lamy lost its tip and I couldn’t get a quick replacement. I shipped his back to him after he had returned home to his studio on Vancouver Island.
I saw the pen again in Spain in 2017 when he, my daughter and I walked our memorable Camino. I was always impressed when he committed to draw directly with pen and skipped the pencil step. No erasing with ink! The pen came home with me after the funeral and it’s kind of cool to be able to use it as I work on this project.
The little dude/eye was a surprise tucked into my stocking - a thoughtful gift from my Secret Santa who must have heard my recent wailing about how hard it is to draw people.
While slurping up my soup this evening, I decided to use my new model … I love the fact they have paddle hands (small mercies) but that didn’t make the rest of them any easier to draw. This version has a tail or growth coming out of their backside (the result of a too-short back arm). The pose, though, did make me think of John Cleese and his Ministry of Funny Walks.
I was pleased, though, that this was pen, pen and only pen and nary a pencil mark in sight.
This one started out as the naked model to which I added clothes. They (it remained rather androgynous even after dressing) have something very strange going on with their butt cheeks. I tried to disguise the worst of the anatomical flaws with heavily-patterned pants and also used the ‘add a distracting chicken on a leash trick’ to try to draw the eye away from the deformed tush. We won’t discuss the grumpy facial features :) Not everyone has to be happy all the time.
Given that Dad was a walker and that there are a couple of chapters of our Camino (mis)adventure, I kind of need to practice drawing a whole bunch of people walking, strolling, hobbling, limping, carrying backpacks, hiking up mountains with an easel on their back… Stick around and you’ll see more of those in the days to come.