SAN MARCO, VENICE IN 1976

San Marco Façade, Venice, 9 x 12 inch ink drawing by George C Clark   AVAILABLE

Here's a real blast from the past!  I recently found this little drawing in an old file I hadn't opened on decades.  It was originally a page from the book of heavy Canson paper in which I began my series of on-site "Traveler's Sketchbook" watercolors when my wife and I were touring Europe by train in the late summer and fall of 1976.  The watercolors I did on that trip are mostly long since sold, but in those early days  I was only showing watercolor paintings in my exhibitions and this drawing got filed away never exhibited.  Ten years later I began working sometimes in the medium of ink and watercolor for this series.  In the last decade as my mobility has declined I have begun doing ink drawings on-site and adding color at home, or sometimes exhibiting the ink drawings without color. 

For this drawing I did the light linework with a Rapidograph technical drawing pen with a no.1 or no. 0 point.  The heavy blacks were added with a Sharpie felt-tip pen.  I just looked at a blown-up map of the Piazza San Marco to determine that I did the drawing at one of the outermost tables of the Caffe Quadri's outdoor seating.   This Caffe has been there since the 18th Century.  It was expensive in 1976 and I understand the prices are even more outrageous today.  However, I got a real kick out of sipping Campari-and-sodas at an establishment previously patronized by Casanova,  William Dean Howells, Richard Wagner, Thomas Mann and Federico Fellini.    

AT AN OUTDOOR ART FAIR

Art Fair, 7 x 8 inch ink drawing by George C. Clark    AVAILABLE

 I drew this little sketch some years ago at an outdoor art fair at Beverly Art Center on Chicago's far south side. This was at their old location, a few blocks east of where they are now.

ARLINGTON STREET MARINA IN JACKSONVILLE

Arlington Street Marina, Jacksonville, 5.5 x 8.5 ink drawing by George C. Clark     AVAILABLE

The Arlington Street Marina on the St. Johns River was across the street from the cottage we rented in Jacksonville.  I went over one morning after breakfast and sketched this tugboat being refitted.

DUNES ON THE FLORIDA COAST

Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida, 8 x 15.5 inch ink drawing by George C. Clark   AVAILABLE

I made this drawing last month at the Guana Tolomato Matanzas National Estuarine Research Reserve on the Atlantic coast north of St. Augustine, Florida, a lovely stretch of beach, dunes, and coastal wetlands.  Swimmers, surfers and fishermen can access the beach, but only via wooden boardwalks that protect the fragile plants that anchor the dunes in place.  I drew from an overlook on one of those boardwalks across a 2-page spread in my sketchbook, which I later cut out of its binding and flattened for framing.  I will probably do a full color version of this image with watercolors.

George C. Clark drawing beach dunes in Florida.  Photo by Pat Clark.

MULL CAR FERRY DOCKED IN OBAN, SCOTLAND

Isle of Mull Car Ferry Docked in Oban, Scotland, 12 x 10 inch ink drawing on cream paper by George C. Clark    AVAILABLE

Here is another page from my Scotland sketchbook.  This shows one of the big Cal-Mac car ferries that connect the Isle of Mull in the Hebrides with the Scottish mainland.  Oban is a good-sized town for the thinly-populated Highlands.  It has a busy port and bills itself both as "the gateway to the Hebrides" and "the seafood capital of Scotland" and it is correct on both counts.  The tide was out when I did this drawing and a lone heron was patrolling the exposed seafloor for edible creatures stranded in the tidal pools.

FISHING TRAWLER IN TOBERMORY, SCOTLAND

Trawler Ellen Ann, Tobermory, Scotland,  13 x 10 inch ink drawing on cream paper by George C. Clark    AVAILABLE

I am recently back from three weeks in Scotland.  We spent 5 nights in Tobermory, the main town on the Isle of Mull in the Hebrides off the west coast of Scotland.  It is a lovely place with a sheltered harbor lined with brightly painted mostly 200 year old buildings.  There is an active fishing fleet and Scotland leads the world in sustainable fish farming so the seafood here is amazingly fresh and delicious and reasonably priced.  This is a page from my sketchbook.  I drew this trawler unloading its catch while waiting for my wife and sisters to join me for supper at the Fish Cafe, an excellent restaurant located on this quay about a hundred feet from where I was drawing.  I had plaice sautéed in lemon butter with roasted little fingerling potatoes and vegetables and a dram of the local Ledaig single malt whisky.  

George C. Clark in Tobermory, Isle of Mull, Scotland

CHRISTMAS IN BROWN COUNTY. INDIANA

Christmas in Nashville, Indiana, 8 x 18 inch ink drawing by George C. Clark   AVAILABLE

We celebrated Christmas with a mini-reunion with my siblings in Brown County, Indiana.  One sister didn't come, but those who did had a splendid holiday.  We stayed at the Abe Martin Lodge in Brown County State Park, which I highly recommend, and not just because it is named after the great newspaper cartoon character created by Indianapolis writer/artist Kin Hubbard.  Christmas morning we went into the nearby town of Nashville.  It was overcast but unseasonably warm-- almost 50 degrees.  I made this on-site drawing across a 2-page spread in my sketchbook.  After working on it about half an hour I had to put my gloves on to finish it, making this the second piece of artwork I created wearing gloves.  The first was a watercolor of the Grand Canyon I painted from the South Rim one December.

The big gingerbread Victorian at the right once housed the John Dillinger Museum, a remarkable collection of artifacts, memorabilia, and ephemera telling the story of the notorious 1930s bank robber.  I wonder what happened to the collection after the museum closed.  At the left is the biggest sycamore tree I have ever seen.  I bet it was already growing there when George Rogers Clark (no relation) drove the British out of Indiana and Illinois and in fact all the territory between the Ohio River and the Great Lakes during the American Revolution.

POND AT THE BIRD SANCTUARY

Pond at the Bird Sanctuary, 9.5 x 13.5 inch ink drawing by George C. Clark    AVAILABLE

JET-LAGGED IN BRIGHTON, ENGLAND

Jet-lagged in Brighton, U.K., 14 x 10 inch ink drawing by George C. Clark    AVAILABLE

This is me about three weeks ago, on the first night of a visit to the United Kingdom.   I can never sleep much on airplanes which made for a very long day.  I crashed after supper in my hotel in Brighton on Britain's south coast,  but then found myself wide awake in the middle of the night.  I pulled a chair into the bathroom, set it in front of the sink, and drew this self-portrait.  The chrome faucet in the foreground is real and everything else in the drawing is the reflection I saw in the mirror.

REND LAKE IN SOUTHERN ILLINOIS

Bass Boat, Rend Lake, Illinois, 8 x 17.5 inch ink drawing by George C. Clark   AVAILABLE

I drew this one day last fall, just before sunset.  On the horizon is the causeway that carries a state highway across the lake.

T-REX FOSSIL SKULL AT THE FIELD MUSEUM

T-Rex Fossil Skull "Sue," Field Museum, Chicago, 6.5 x 10 inch ink drawing by George C. Clark

Last winter I attended an evening function at the Field Museum and sketched "Sue," the most complete tyrannosaurus-rex fossil skeleton yet found, displayed in an action pose in the museum's Stanley Field Hall looming over the coffee service of the evening's buffet.  I posted that drawing from my sketchbook on this blog back in March of 2013.

I was at the museum again a couple of weeks ago and this time I sketched "Sue's" skull displayed in a glass case on the museum's mezzanine overlooking the action pose skeleton.  The action pose skeleton is held in place and supported by an unobtrusive steel framework.  However, a framework strong enough to support this 600 pound skull out on the end of "Sue's" long neck vertebrae would not be unobtrusive, so the real fossil skull is displayed upstairs while the action pose skeleton sports a lightweight replica.  Also displayed in the glass case are teeth found with the scull that couldn't be replaced in the jaws because of distortions caused by being trapped in layers of limestone for 65 million years.     

EVERGLADES ALLIGATOR, TAKE 2

Alligator, 7 x 18 inch ink drawing by George C. Clark    SOLD

When I was in Florida last May I tried to sketch alligators at the Everglades Alligator Farm just outside the Everglades National Park, but none of the gators would hold still long enough to be drawn.  I wound up drawing this across a double page spread in my sketchbook back at my South Beach hotel while looking at a couple of on-site photos displayed on my camera's screen.  I posted the right half of it back in May on this blog.  I have since cut the spread out of the sketchbook, flattened and framed it for my recent show at Arts on Elston, so I can now post the whole drawing.

EVERGLADES ALLIGATOR

Everglades Alligator (detail), 8 x 17 inch ink drawing by George C. Clark

I tried to sketch this gator in the Florida Everglades last week, but he wouldn't hold still long enough to be drawn.  I photographed him, and did this drawing from my photographs.  I actually drew the whole gator across a 2-page spread of my 8 x 8.5 inch inch sketchbook.  It is on a single sheet of paper, but the middle of it is folded and stitched into the binding of the sketchbook.  I won't be able to flatten the drawing out to be properly photographed or framed until I cut the sketchbook's binding apart, which I fully intend to do, but just not yet.

DINOSAUR AT THE BUFFET

Dinosaur at the Buffet, 10 x 6.5 inch ink drawing by George C. Clark

The last three lengthy posts have been about art that I created over thirty years ago.  Let's look at something more recent.  Last Tuesday I was invited by friends to Members' Night at the Field Museum (Chicago's natural history museum).  I had a chance to see the new "Creatures of Light: Nature's Bioluminescence" exhibit and to do some sketching in the collection.  The evening included a very nice catered buffet supper served in the museum's big central Stanley Field Hall.  Coffee was dispensed under Sue the Tyrannosaurus Rex, as I recorded above in my sketchbook.    

NORTH YORKSHIRE HORSE

Draft Horse, Ripley Castle, N. Yorkshire, 6 x 6 inch ink drawing by George C. Clark    AVAILABLE

When our party stopped for an ice cream and restroom break in the village of Ripley Castle, I took advantage of the time to sketch this draft horse by the doorway of an old stone barn.

CONEFLOWERS x 2

October Coneflowers, 16 x 12 inch signed print by George C. Clark    AVAILABLE

October Coneflowers, 40 x 30 inch ink drawing by George C. Clark    AVAILABLE

When I do an exhibition of my travel art I usually mention in the press release that "subjects range from the back roads of Europe to the artist's own Chicago back yard."  Here is one of those subjects I found in my back yard.  One October a few years ago I was struck by the graphic qualities of a browning, wilted coneflower plant drying out next to my garage.  I put a big piece of light-colored cardboard between the plant and the dark brown wall of the garage and made a 20 x 16 inch ink and watercolor painting of it, which I promptly sold to a collector in Evanston.  I liked the image so much that I photographed my painting and adapted the digital image to create the 16 x 12 inch open edition signed print shown above.  (The print shown isn't signed yet-- I sign them in pencil just above the copyright notice at the lower left.) 

Occasionally I find a subject so interesting I do more than one version of it, and this is such a case.  Using my first painting as a guide, I made a much bigger black-and-white ink drawing with a fat calligraphy pen on a 40 x 30 inch sheet of heavy watercolor board.  In doing so, I made a few subtle changes to the composition.  I think of it as an study in spidery linearity. 

THE SIGN OF THE KING'S HEAD, KETTLEWELL, NORTH YORKSHIRE

King's Head Sign, 6 x 6 inch ink drawing by George C. Clark    AVAILABLE

   

The Sign of the King's Head, Kettlewell, North Yorkshire, 14 x 10 inch watercolor by George C. Clark    SOLD

I painted this on a sleepy Sunday morning sitting on a bench on a traffic island in the middle of the intersection of the two main roads in the village of Kettlewell.  The King's Head is one of three pubs in town.  It's in the white building a little recessed from its neighbors.  I walked down and made a close-up drawing of the pub's sign in my sketchbook before I painted it.

BROWN COUNTY CATBIRD

Catbird at the Suet Feeder, Brown County State Park, Indiana, 5 x 6 inch ink drawing by George C. Clark    AVAILABLE

I went to the opening of the Kinsey Institute Juried Show at Indiana University that I have a figure painting in last weekend.  You can see a NOT SAFE FOR WORK posting about that show at whatsnewfromgeorgecclark.tumblr.com.  I arrived the night before the opening and stayed in Nashville, Indiana, about 16 miles from the campus in Bloomington.  Nashville is the gateway to Brown County State Park, which preserves the beautiful highlands of south central Indiana that have been attracting artists since the Nineteenth Century.  The Abe Martin Lodge there is named after the newspaper comic character created by cartoonist and humorist Kin Hubbard, and features many examples of his art.  I spent most of Friday hiking and sketching in the park.  At the Nature Center they have an observation room where you can watch birds and small forest creatures feeding through a big one-way glass window.  I sketched this catbird feeding upside-down on the suet feeder.

ECSTATIC ANGELS FROM BERLIN AT JACKSON JUNGE GALLERY

Ecstatic Angels, Nikolaikirche, Berlin, 10 x 13 inch ink drawing by George C. Clark    SOLD

I drew these baroque carved-wood angels in the reconstructed Nikolaikirche in Berlin recently.  It has been selected to be in the exhibition ANGELICIES: A LOOK AT THE MODERN DAY ANGEL at Jackson Junge Gallery, 1389 N. Milwaukee Avenue in Chicago.  The exhibition opens Friday, November 18, 2011, with an artists' reception from 6 to 9pm, and will run through the holidays.

I did the drawing on a single sheet of paper that formed facing pages of a bound sketchbook.  I made a copy print of the open sketchbook, retouched out evidence of the center crease, and signed and photographed the print to make the digital image posted above and at What's New From George C. Clark.  At the gallery I will be showing the original drawing which I have taken out of its binding and am now flattening before I frame it.  I will sign it with the date I drew it instead of the caption "Ecstatic Angels."

Update 10pm November 18:  I just got back from the opening reception and I am happy to report this drawing is sold.

JET-LAGGED IN BERLIN

Jet-lagged in Berlin, 9.5 x 6 inch ink drawing by George C. Clark

Just back from two weeks in Germany.  I arrived in Berlin at lunchtime after having slept only a fitful hour and a half on the transatlantic flight.  Had lunch at Savignyplatz and reacquainted myself with the neighborhood before returning to the hotel for a 90 minute nap.  ”Must stay awake until local bedtime,” I told myself, then headed for a Helmut Newton exhibition at the new Museum für Fotografie located in an old imperial court building behind the Bahnhof Zoo.  Fortunately it was Thursday, the day most Berlin museums are open late.  Then I had a late supper and finally crashed at 10pm local time.  What do you do when you find yourself suddenly wide awake in a foreign city at 3 o’clock in the morning?  If you’re me, you go in the bathroom of your Kurfurstendamm hotel room and draw a portrait of yourself reflected in the mirror and the adjustable round magnifying mirror.