This woman is a worship leader at our church. She sings on stage but when not singing she sits on side row with her family. Today her son was intensely interested in a stretchy rope that he brought with him and spent a while sitting in front of her playing with it. She did a great job parenting him, using a nice combination of letting him do his thing with reminders to behave and pay attention. She didn’t enforce, just reminded.
Natalie in Church
I found myself in church sitting next to Natalie and her family from my community group. I usually don’t sit right next to people and if I do I certainly don’t usually draw them. But I know Natalie and I know that her whole family are church doodlers so I felt comfortable drawing her. When I painted the drawing later I didn’t remember the exact color scheme except she was in light clothes and there was pink here and there. So, that is what i imagined and I chose the colors.
Eight Angry Saints
When I am sitting in church, cafe and waiting room and have finished a drawing I often will not start a new one from observation. I will just start making something up and draw that. I will often just start with a long line and then let that tell me where to go. The woman’s hair in the front was the first long line. I did that one then just started repeating the shape of the face and the hair, adding in variations just to see what expressions and looks I could come up with. I added halos and all of a sudden they were saints.
Scene in a Museum
Sometimes I see someone’s face and something stands out that I am attracted to. In this case I just happened to glimpse a woman with a very distinct nose. I wasn’t able to see much more of her so instead of trying to draw her from life I just started with the curve of her nose as I remembered it and made up most the rest. I also remembered her hair style and incorporated an stylized version of that as well. When I draw from memory and with no exact reference I will often turn the person into a museum piece of some sort. In this case she became a sculptural bust. But she was on the right side face left and that left a big blank space on the right. So I thought it would be fun to draw her looking at a painting of the rest of herself.
Preacherman
We had a guest preacher a few weeks back. He was a snappy dresser so I started to draw him. However, I didn’t really like his message, it was too preachy, formulaic and simplistic for my taste.
Mindscapes
This woman was in front of me at church. Once I finished drawing her profile I lost interest in drawing the rest of the church scene so I started making up a story about her using images instead of words. What she thought, what she said, what she actually was living and how different they were.
I was scanning a sketchbook from 2020 recently and noticed a pattern in a number of drawings. There were a number of nudes with arms raised in joy, ranging from the simplest of stick figures to full nudes in a domestic setting. I thought they all looked happy so I am gathering them together and showing them to you.
Part of the reason for showing them is because I saw the pattern. But another is that happy nudes are a rarity. Most of the time when a nude is presented in art, they are meant to be seen as serious or sensual or sexual or erotic or romantic or beautiful. Not many are created to be seen as happy. But happy is just as legitimate an emotion for someone who is nude as any other emotion or feeling.
Her eyes were closed during the sermon and I was worried about her coffee on the ledge so I decided she was worried about it too.
The Sermon About Money
I imagined her speaking one and thinking another.
The Sermon About Barabbas
The young women listening closely to the guest pastor preaching about Barabbas being set free instead of Jesus on the order of Pilate who washed his hands of the whole thing and went home to a good dinner.
Uh Uh Uh
Um
Um Ahh Hmm
The doctor studied the patient and diagnosed she was a snake and prescribed and apple a day
Back in 2015 LInda, Caitlin and I took a vacation to London and Paris. I did many pen and ink drawings in my sketchbook. I didn’t paint any of them at the time but always had the intention of getting back to them to do that. When I got home from my 2025 trip to Europe I took out my old 2015 sketchbook to compare drawings from the two adventures and decided it was time to paint.
I chose to only partially paint the drawings as an experiment. I like them this way. what do you think?
The Bird’s Nest, 2015-2025
She did everything fast, frenetic, like a bird. She built her nest in the seat next to mine as we flew over the Atlantic.
The Shot of Coffee, 2015-2025
She wasn’t sure what I meant when I said I wanted a shot of coffee but it was my fault while in London because I didn’t know but the tall guy told me that they call it filtered coffee and then she knew.
The Love Far Away, 2015-2025
She ate her oatmeal as she thought of the love of her life far away but happy.
The Arm Drawn Wrong, 2015-2025
She had crutches and was eating a paster and I drew her arm wrong and had to make up for it as best I could.
Self-Portrait, 2015-2025
Self-portrait in an iPad while I Periscope in a coffee shop, Il Molino, in Lavender Hill in London, UK and eating pastries.
The Lovers, 2015-2025
I didn’t meet them so I made up a story about them but it isn’t true so I will tell it to you now. They were lovers breaking up in a french cafe but were from Rome and one wanted to go home and the other pretended to care but had a secret.
The Museum I Didn’t Go To, 2015-2025
The woman looked so French with her big bow and loose bobbed hair that I had to draw her but it was the woman eating in the back who noticed me drawing and came over wanted to see and told me about her favorite museum that I didn’t end up going to.
Caitlin and the Shy Asian Girl, 2015-2025
Caitlin didn’t know I was drawing her but the shy asian girl with the stylish hat did and it made her smile and blush and happy and I gave her my card.
She Wished She Stayed, 2015-2025
She was in Paris and was bringing home gifts to her family but wished she could stay because the kind man in the train station who saved her from having her wallet stolen and they had talked and he walked her and her friend over to the cute cafe for a glass of wine and they talked more and he helped them find the store selling a certain type of Macarons and then to dinner where they ate escargot and drank more wine and she thought she was too old for that sort of thing but felt the tingle and was happy.
After I got home from France I was inspired to continue to create when out and about as much as possible. This includes, as usual, drawing in church. But I also drew on the train, in a park and in a museum. And, as is often the case, I also drew images that I just made up in my head. I also painted a drawing I started while in France.
Mèlanie a Hotel Demeure, Paris
Once I painted the image I made sure to contact Mélanie at the hotel and send her the finished image. She was happy to see it and made a point to welcome us to stay there again if we came back.
TheSinger WaitingDistracted PrayerListening to the Sermon About the TongueLunch at the Kimbell Museum, Fort Worth, TXKatie with the DrawingEating at Klyde Warren Park, Dallas, TXWaiting for Food at Klyde Warren Park, Dallas, TXReading a Book About Women on DARTReading Her Phone on DARTThe Sermon Was About FireThe Butterfly and the VolcanoSpirals
I like my large sketchbook because the paper is very high quality and takes the ink very well. I got it at the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas a couple of years back. While in France this one came out most mornings at breakfast and a few other times when I was alone and/or had plenty of time.
En Attente de Voler Vers la France
I loved this scene because of the juxtaposition between partners. One in a tshirt and shorts, the other in a big puffy winter coat. We all do what we need to do when we fly, right?
En Attendant le Train à Grande Vityesse
We had a long layover at Charles de Gaulle Airport before our bullet train to the Loire Valley. This young woman was also waiting so I took the opportunity to draw her. The space was beautiful, all windows, giant beams and guide wires supporting the roof while in the foreground there was a huge plant taking up the entire left side of my field of vision. It made for a very active background and foreground.
Petit-déjeuner à AmboisePetit-dejeuner à VersaillesHommes d’affaires au petit-déjeunerEmployé d’hôtel à Caen
Every morning I got up early and either went for a run or sat and drew during breakfast or in the lobby. Most days there was someone in the restaurant to draw but one morning there was no one so I went into the lounge and drew the hotel employee behind the desk, which also was a coffee bar.
Dejeuner au café ‘Hoct and Loct’ à Paris
My Brother-in-law Steve and I were on our own after returning the rental car so we took a stroll around Paris. We found a great little cafe for lunch and I was thinking I wish I was alone so I could just sit and draw for as long as I wanted when something surprising occurred. Steve brought out a small sketchbook and said, ‘Marty, teach me to draw.’ He had bought a sketchbook and pencils just to take on the trip. So I gave him some pointers, mostly just about not trying to worry about accuracy and not trying to make it look like a photograph and off we went. We probably spent an hour just eating our lunch and drawing and it was a lot of fun! He did really well and it made my day that he made the effort to connect with me in that way on vacation.
Le Pendule de Foucault avec le Monument à Diderot en Arriére-plan
The next day I was on my own in Paris. I was planning to go see the David Hockney exhibition at the Foundation Louis Vuitton but it was sold out so I pivoted to the Pantheon. I wanted all of us to go but I couldn’t convince the others it was worth it so I went solo. It was worth it. An AMAZING space with incredible history, paintings and sculptures. I will post more about it in the future when I continue my ‘Art I Love’ series. While I was there I spent a substantial amount of time doing this drawing. It’s hard to draw a pendulum because it is always moving but besides that it’s pretty much invisible. You have to draw the background to give it some space in which to live. I was able to find a bench facing the monument to Diderot so that became my background so to speak.
While I was drawing I saw a young girl sort of hovering around me. She was obviously watching me draw but was too shy to come up and talk to me. Eventually her mother came alongside her and they moved forward just a bit. I stopped drawing and gestured for them to come over. They were from England and I was able to speak to them. I showed her the drawing, explained to her what I was working on in the drawing and why. I told the young girl she could do the same thing with practice. The mother asked if it was possible to see the other drawing in the sketchbook so I turned a number of pages and showed them the completed drawings from days earlier and some I had done back home. They were very appreciative and left feeling like they had seen a genuine Parisian moment of an artist drawing, even if I wasn’t French!
Melanie à Hôtel Demeure, Paris
The last day we were in Paris there was no one yet in the breakfast area of the hotel so I meandered over to the front desk area and asked the clerk, Melanie, if I could draw her. She was amenable. We had a nice time talking about Paris and I was happy to get one final drawing in before we left for the states.
On this trip I took two sketchbooks to France, one small, one large.
I brought out the small sketchbook for when I felt like I had just a few moments to draw or I had limited room, like on the airplane. Here are the drawings from that sketchbook with any photos I took of the scene I was drawing.
Small Sketchbook
à l’extérieur du Café du Château, Amboise, France
We flew into Paris but immediately took a train down to the Loire Valley to meet Linda’s sister and brother-in-law. While we waited for our dinner reservations I drew this scene at a nearby café.
Le Paon Blanc au Jardin de Leonardo da Vinci, France
I know this is a pretty pathetic drawing of a peacock but you try drawing a moving bird!
Petit Déjeuner à l’hôtel à Caen
Each morning I tried to get in either a run or a drawing. Our hotels weren’t in urban areas until we were in Paris so I didn’t find little cafes to go and sit at. But each hotel had a breakfast (petit-dejeuner) area so I settled in and drew there.
Concert à Notre Dame
We got tickets to go to a concert in Notre Dame the first evening we were in Paris. It was a selection of sacred music, mostly about Mary, the mother of Jesus. Before it started I drew the scene, including the very large head of a man right in front of me.
Constance en Cour de la Maison de Delacroix
I had a whole day to myself while in Paris. I went to the Pantheon (see the ‘large drawings’ for a drawing I did there) and then to the Delacroix Museum. It is a very small museum located in an apartment he lived in at one point. I thought I was exiting when I discovered I was being led to a beautiful courtyard garden. While I was in the courtyard I noticed a young woman reading. I decided to draw her and luckily she stayed for quite a long time. When I was done I showed the drawing to her and she was very happy about it. It turns out that her name is Constance, which is also the name of one of my daughters. We had a nice conversation about art, books and Paris before I left.
Un Femme de Profil en Paris
As much as Paris is fantastic one thing my wife found was that the tea left something to be desired. So that meant she was very excited to see a Starbucks and went in to get her favorite Matcha tea. I stayed outside and drew this woman who was beside me. She seemed to also be waiting for someone.
Jeune Femme Assise au Mussée du Louvre
Going to the Louvre is always an adventure. So many people, so many ways to get lost in the crowd. I was waiting for my compatriots to come back from the bathrooms and saw this young woman sitting all by herself, deep into her phone with her hair obscuring almost all of her face. I knew I would have to work fast so I did a minimalist portrait that I think captures her perfectly.
Le Coureur Avant la Course en Paris
While up early drinking coffee downstair in the hotel I met a couple from Iowa. They were both dressed as runners so I struck up a conversation with them as they were ready to head out for their first run in Paris. I saw them the next morning as well but both mornings I either didn’t run or ran earlier. It would have been fun to run with them. I drew the woman of the couple as she sat drinking her coffee before the run.
Julie Dans l’avion Pour Londres
We met this woman, Julie, and her family as we were headed home. We had a change over in London and met them at the British Air desk before we checked in. They went on their way and we thought we were about to do the same but there was a hiccup. My ticket had me as ‘Marty’ but my passport had me as ‘Martin’. They would not allow me to board with that egregious infraction, even though I had already made it to Europe, so I had to spend and hour and a half with reps from BA and American Airlines to hassle it out. It took quite a while but it was resolved and we ended up just one seat back from Julie and her family. I drew her as she watched a movie.
Ana Endormie au Dessus de l’océan
Our second leg of the trip home had me in a middle seat. A young woman, Ana, with a healthy bit of sun on her cheeks sat down next to me. We talked for quite a while about her student trip to Greece and our vacation. Because she was right next to me I wasn’t thinking I would draw her but when she nested with a blanket, ear buds, a neck pillow AND a sleep mask I felt like I could safely draw her without bothering anyone.
I only did two drawings in color. Both were started by referencing photos I took and were not drawn live.
Une Femme Dans la Boutique de Souvenirs à Versailles
This drawing started from a photograph I took in the souvenir shop at Versailles. I happen to catch this woman in passing and liked the splash of red on her lips. Later that night in my hotel room I drew and colored her. It was the only time I brought out my markers on the trip. Next time I would leave them at home.
Protéger l’investissement
This was another started from a photo. This person I photographed on purpose because of how quintessentially Parisian she looked while browsing in the Louvre bookstore. She had something in her hand that I could not discern so I turned it into an umbrella. The angle of it made me think about her protecting her purchase so that’s the direction I went.
I have been scanning my sketchbooks of the past 54 years. Some were line drawings I knew I wanted to paint but never got around to them. This is especially true of a large black sketchbook I drew in from 2008-2010.
Here is a selection of the drawings from that sketchbook that I painted this year, 15+ years later.
I often will go back into old sketchbooks and continue working on images, no matter how old they are. This is usually because it is a line drawing that I am now interested in painting. It’s a mystery why some images don’t catch my imagination to go farther than the original drawing until many years or decades later. But when the spirit moves I usually act on it. Here are a selection of drawings where I did just that.
Move the slider from left to right to see the before and after versions.
Woman Studying at Starbucks at Utica Square, Tulsa, OK – drawn 2015, painted 2025
Woman in Pajamas in the Hospital Waiting Room Drawn 2015, painted 2025
Sarah Jo at ‘Nutrition with Attitude’, Rowlett, TX – Drawn 2024, painted 2025
The Writer at Starbucks, Denver, CO Drawn 2016, painted 2025
I have continued to draw with my Copic Gasenfude ink brush lately. Something about the line width control I can get and, at the same time, the unpredictability of the line makes me enjoy both the act and result of drawing.
And as you can see I continue to draw in church. The sermons have been particularly uninspiring since our new Pastor arrived 4 months ago so I am very glad to have my sketchbook with me. The only problem is not paying attention to the sermon, which I used to be able to do but only if it’s brain stimulating in some way. When they aren’t I tend to zone it out.
