Anyway, This one turned out pretty well. I cut it short at the bottom to keep the focus above, though I should have done so in a more artistic way. The hands turned out relatively well, considering how difficult fine detail is with charcoal. Like any drawing, there are plenty of imperfections, but it certainly felt good to be creative again. All things considered, it’s a decent drawing considering how long it has been since the last one!

Like most mornings, I had smacked the snooze button of my alarm clock a few times before forcing myself out of the warm bed. Zombie mode had taken over as I completed the ritualized morning routine. I ate my cereal, skimming through a car magazine, trying to imagine owning the latest supercar. I neglected thinking about the inability to drive the car to my apartment’s designated parking space due to the extra large speed bumps and instead focused on accelerating to three times the speed limit faster than my car could get onto the highway. Being a fantasy, the cops were actually pulling over drivers for cutting people off rather than speeding, and people actually stayed out of the fast lane instead of being three cars wide with only a one-mile-per-hour difference.

I chuckled at the lack of realism and took my now-empty bowl to the sink. Glancing at the oven’s clock, I saw that I was actually a few minutes ahead of schedule.

I brushed my teeth in the bathroom and narrowly missed spitting the used toothpaste on my hand. It was early; I was still mostly asleep.

I lightly sprayed some cheap cologne on myself. The smell was too weak for me to notice, but I had learned the important life lesson “If you can smell your own cologne, it’s too strong” long ago.

Glancing at the mirror, I saw that my hair was still there, so I made my way toward the front door. I threw on my light jacket, ignoring the impending rain predicted by the news channel’s professional weather guesser. My wallet went into one pocket, and my under-used cellphone went into the other. From the counter, I grabbed my keys—no, the keys weren’t there. Why weren’t the keys there?

I checked my pockets and found the phone, the wallet, and a small ball of lint, but no keys. I checked under yesterday’s junk mail that still sat unopened on the counter. Nothing.

My brain, now just awake enough to be a threat to a five-year-old at tac-tac-toe, suggested checking the couch. Unfortunately, I didn’t even find spare change under the cushions. Another glance at the clock, and my semi-awake brain created the image of a cheap hourglass from a board game dropping the last few bits of sand.

The bus would be down the street in five minutes, so I rushed about fast enough to put a headless chicken to shame. Thought: maybe they were in my pants from yesterday. If this were Family Feud, my team would be saying, “Good answer; good answer.” And then the buzzer would sound loudly, flatly denying my guess. The pockets of yesterday were even devoid of lint.

My time was up. I had to rush out and just not lock the apartment door. The quest to find my keys would continue tonight, provided no burglar took the opportunity to relieve me of my worldly possessions, eliminating the need to find the keys. I charged out the door, swinging it shut without looking back.

The door slammed, and then it made a sound like someone had just bombarded it with a half-dozen pennies. Curiosity beat my sense of urgency, and I turned to see the origin of the sound.

Dangling from the deadbolt lock were my keys, still there from last night. They sparked two thoughts: Damn, I’m an idiot, and chicken sounds good for dinner tonight.

It has been a while since I did anything artistic, so I have been feeling like getting back to it the past few days. I finally did so today and spent about an hour drawing an eagle with charcoal. I used a random reference from a Google Images search, but I viewed it on my phone only, so I would just get the overall shapes from it. Of course, you can only do so much detail with charcoal anyway.

I also took snapshot of my progress every few minutes, using my Nexus One phone. Here are some scaled down versions for quick comparison:

For a few minutes every day, I find myself distracted by the incredibly bad parallel parking I see in Seattle. The image is an example of someone with no spacial awareness, the available space roughly the same size as the car. That didn’t prevent him (or her) from attempting to park and then proceeding to hit both the vehicle in front and behind. He then pulled out a bit to correct the angle and did it again. The owner of the car behind came out and banged on the rear quarter panel of the parking vehicle to let the driver know he was about to hit the car again.

The driver drove off shortly after that, but another car came within thirty seconds to try at the same spot. Fortunately, this car was 3/4 the size of the previous vehicle. Unfortunately, the driver still managed to hit both the vehicle in front and the vehicle behind. If only such hits were a rare occurrence and not a daily one.

At least I have gained new respect for the durability of car paint.

This is the final sketch I did on the 27th (Friday). It’s also in charcoal and based on an anatomical sketch from one of my art reference books. Her face is terrible, but the rest is okay. She looks slightly wider than she should be, so her ribs look a bit off.

I also did this sketch on the 27th (Friday) with charcoal. It’s not perfect, especially her head, but it came out pretty well, and I’m definitely still in love with charcoal. This is based on an example anatomical sketch from one of my reference books.

Finally, I am catching up my posts with my sketch book. I did this one on the 27th (Friday). I love charcoal, but I commonly try to put in too much detail or sketch a large subject on a small paper. This time I took the opposite approach and sketched a small object on a 9″x12″ (22.9×30.5cm) paper, and it turned out pretty well.

This is supposed to be Snake from the Metal Gear series, but it looks a lot like I carved him out of melting wax and then sketched the result. I did this one October 4th with charcoal.

I actually did this charcoal sketch directly after the previous pencil sketch because I disliked the other so much, haha. This one is very simplistic but shows a decent amount of form for being such a quick sketch.