I think I should title these entries after I've written them not before. I assume I am speaking to friends, or at least neutral people I might be a friend with if we were to meet. I'm not the kind of person that goes out in the world looking for potential people to be enemies with. I like to think I give everyone equal opportunity to be friends. There are different layers of friends  of course.

I consider this dude who cleans the gym where I work out a friend, but like level one, or 1C. I don't know his name, but only a week after he was working there, he found my locker key on the floor after I had left. Instead of turning it in to lost and found, or going through my locker to take my dirty shorts and some soap, he held on to it until the next day. As soon as I walked in the gym, he stopped me and asked if I lost my key. I said yes and he fished it out of his pocket with a "here you go, I thought it was yours". He just got in to Level 1! I had a spare, so it wouldn't have been a tragedy, but how cool is that?

I was just impressed he had paid attention as to who I was and at which locker all during his first week. The guy at the desk who has seen me a million times, recognizes me, and still seems surprised when I ask for a towel every time.

I have a newsletter you can sign up and "hear" more rantings and opinions and usually see a preview of the art I'll be sharing in the coming week. Ok my friends... Some figure drawings from this past weekend. Newsletter people have already seen a few of these.

More figure drawing at Spring Street. My friend Colleen was modeling at Muchmores coffee house again but I just didn't have time to get to Brooklyn again. Colleen is a really cool person that models.

I don't know the name of the model I was drawing at Spring Street, but I had drawn her before and she is really good. The rhythms of her figure are just really fun to discover and draw.

Figure drawing at Spring Street this past week. The models were awesome but I wasn't drawing very fast and then I had to meet someone all of a sudden. No emergency, but the big picture is I needed to coordinate with this person sooner than later so I skipped out after about an hour or so of drawing. No one ever seems to be on my schedule!

I'm posting the first 20 minute segment. These were all one minute gestures. The model had a plan and I was fascinated how he was dictating what everyone's pages would look like. About 4 poses in I realized what he was doing and I thought it was cool. He began the first couple of poses with his arms up in the air over his head.This created a lot of long thin shapes on the page.

A little about the process. The first few segments are for warming up your eye and looking and seeing quickly. First 20 minutes are one or two minute gesture poses. In this case there were 20 one minute poses. Five min. break, then another twenty minutes, usually four 5 min poses. then two  tens, then on to a 20 minute pose.

I had decided to use this light blue Le Pen marker I've been carrying around for at least a few months in my bag. When I realized how the one minute poses were going I thought this would work out nicely if I switched to a black micron part way through. The whole time I was admiring the personality this guy was projecting with just his pose selection and how he held them. He didn't talk much, but when the woman showed up a little late who was suppose to model with him, the male ball room dancer in him showed up. He told her exactly how he wanted her to pose with his pose and directed her like I've seen male dancers cue their partners about what maneuver is next. They made some great shapes to draw! I wish I had been able to stay the whole time.

Interesting models almost every time at Spring Street.

This was at Spring Street Studios again.

I went to Brooklyn in the neighborhood Williamsburg to draw Colleen. I've worked with her a few times and is fun to draw. She has a site to announce where and when she's posing around the city and is trying to create a hub for the artists that she has worked with. The drawing session was held at Muchmores, a coffeehouse, with a small performance space, tables, couches and a stage. It had some murals on most of the walls. Outside the Giglio Feast  was getting ready to go. Lots of really tasty looking street festival food that I almost never eat. It smelled great on the walk back to the subway. I like looking at all the festival rides and booths in the day time. They are like these weird sculptures. In the daytime before everything is open and running, they look abandoned and there should be some creepy psychotic clown waiting to jump out at you and squirt you with his trick flower lapel! The apocalypse of clown!