Pandemic Drawings

One of the silver linings of the pandemic has been that I’ve had a little more time to work on my personal projects. When I moved my studio home at the end of January I decided to start drawing every day and when COVID shut everything down the practice became easier to maintain. Now, almost a year later, I’ve made close to 500 sketches. Most of them were done quickly, and most were copies of either photos (landscapes in upstate New York, England, and Switzerland) or other artist’s drawings ( Schiele, Cézanne, and Constable) that I found online.

I drew a lot between the ages of 16 and 26. Since then the bulk of my personal creative effort has been devoted to pinhole photography, though in the back of my mind I always planned to get back to drawing. Starting out again I set the bar low, choosing to do landscapes, which are much more forgiving than portraits or anything else figurative, and having as a goal simply to have fun. In spite of that it’s not been easy — my drawing muscles were definitely out of shape. Fortunately, like riding a bicycle, my skills hadn’t entirely abandoned me, and over the course of the year I started to see progress. Below are a handful of my favorites — I hope you enjoy them!