The latest TTC Subway crop: the first one on 6"x9" tan paper (pen is unforgiving, and the cross-hatching on her left cheek isn't quite right, but, hey, just a transit drawing); the latter two on 3½"x5½" cream paper. I do like working in the small book - more discreet. Disclaimer: These resemble the folks who inspired them but are not accurate renderings since either they got off the train or I did before I was finished the drawing and so relied on memory.

Later: It looks like I forgot to upload a couple more transit sketches.

                                      

The last page shown here is what happened when, unknown to me, I used water on one of the sketches... it soaked through with the ink and ruined a few pages back. So I did a few more sketches in the Strathmore toned grey, and then bought a new sketchbook, and another smaller one.
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Saturday morning sketches with a rather crude ink pen that resisted the Strathmore 80lb drawing paper, and required digging the nib in, and losing finesse of line. Drawing with it is like hacking away at the paper. But my babies don't mind, and they sweetly slept.


And this little charcoal sketch of Aria, maybe Jan 2018. It's black and white charcoal only. She moved before I drew the back of her head, and so that is a bit awkward.

Charcoal is much easier, for sure. Just not sure it is the look I am after.

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So St Valentine, who was potentially one of three martyrs, was beheaded. How did he become a patron saint of love? All three men lived during the 3rd century: two lived in Italy, Saint Valentine of Rome and Saint Valentine of Terni, while the third resided in a Roman province in North Africa. It doesn't matter which one we celebrate since the festival the Christian Valentine's appropriated was the Roman feast Lupercalia, a pagan fertility festival. In one of the rites, naked men raced wearing goat skins while women stood at various places along the course. Children, along the route of naked men racing from wolves in their goat skins, would choose to pair couples, who had to live together and be intimate for a year afterwards. Blame Chaucer and Shakespeare for the romanticization of Valentines, and American commercialism for the sugar-sweet cutesy heart cards with little Valentines and their arrows. Lupercalia reigns, and don't forget! Be wolves today.
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