Anthony Zierhut SketchBlog

Trip to Texas - Sketch 2

2008-06-29T14:50:00.001-07:00

I started sketching this man during our flight because I loved his profile. Then a flight attendant came over to him and said, "Would it be all right if I told them who you are?" to which he nodded yes. She then announced over the P.A. that "we have an aviation hero on the plane, Gail Halvorsen." He was even featured in the in-flight magazine in the seat pocket in front of me. Here's his Wikipedia page. Very interesting.

Trip to Texas - Sketch 1

2008-06-18T14:00:00.001-07:00

My son's first plane flight. They always hold still when they're sleeping.

Men having lunch

2008-06-07T18:30:00.001-07:00

Kids' dentist waiting room

2008-06-04T10:33:00.000-07:00

There's something funny about taking a teenager who's about to go into high school to a dentist office with all the brightly colored walls, toys and a big model train in the middle of the room, but this is part of that funny, awkward age.

Work area

2008-05-30T16:36:00.001-07:00

Since the studio has provided it for me, I've been drawing storyboards on a Cintiq for the last 11 months now. The question frequently comes up between fellow artists, "What do you do with the keyboard?" I have mine stashed in the desk drawer just below it, ready to use or slide away.

After I drew this, it occurred to me that I drew my work area about the same time last year. As much as I have gotten used to this wonderful digital drawing tool, I did the sketch of it on paper :)

I like drawing on this thing so much, I got their smaller Cintiq for my home office (try to ignore the mess on my drawing table).

Girls reading

2008-05-20T21:28:00.001-07:00

Breakfast view

2008-05-17T14:57:00.001-07:00

I drew this in three short, consecutive sittings while I was eating breakfast at the studio, probably totaling about 45 minutes. I'm still excited about using that .5mm mechanical pencil for some reason.

Out my window

2008-05-13T19:18:00.000-07:00

A 15-minute watercolor sketch. I'm trying out a .5mm mechanical pencil, instead of the usual 2mm clutch pencil.

Happy Mother's Day

2008-05-11T22:55:00.001-07:00

A quickie sketch as I was waiting to have my wife's car washed for Mother's Day (this isn't her car, by the way). I hope all the moms had a great day today.

Technical issues...

2008-05-10T15:42:00.000-07:00

Some weird stuff going on at Blogger.com. I have not been able to post for a few days because something is broken on their end, not allowing me to post to my personal domain (anthonyzierhut.com). So, for the time being, I'm continuing the blog at this new address -- www.anthonyzierhut.blogspot.com.

There's no need to change any of your links to my blog, as I've put up a re-direct page from there to here, and everything seems to be working. Hopefully this will get resolved soon.

Birthday Flowers

2008-05-09T07:35:00.001-07:00

Some birthday flowers for Joanie, sketched a couple days ago. I'm not sure if anyone else is having the problem I am with Blogger right now. Normally you can click on this image to see a larger version of it, but not this time, as I had to hand-code this image post. Blogger seemed unable to upload an image to my FTP server. Weird. Hopefully they'll fix it soon.

UPDATE 5/21/08: Seems better -- I can finally post again, but still a little buggy.

At the barber shop this afternoon

2008-05-03T21:15:00.001-07:00

Another recorded visit to the barbershop. I've been drawing so much at work these days that I've been neglecting the sketching it seems. Time to get back into it.

Gregory Weir-Quiton

2008-04-07T22:41:00.000-07:00

I just picked up a copy of a local magazine -- the Verdugo Monthly -- that has a great article about fashion and film illustrator Gregory Weir-Quiton. The print version has many examples of his beautiful pencil and watercolor life sketches. The on-line version of the article has reproduced one of them at the top of the page. Check it out here.

As of this writing his official web site is still mostly under construction, but the flash intro page has a few more examples of his drawings. Really inspiring.

2008-04-06T16:43:00.001-07:00

Father & Son

2008-03-05T22:25:00.000-08:00

At a recent school event.

Fun and interesting links...

2008-02-28T22:52:00.000-08:00

Once again I've been looking at Mort Drucker's work for inspiration, and once again I get that combination of excitement, admiration and ego-flattening humility in the presence of his genius. Check out this blog post of some of his originals (you can see his pencil lines and washes really well on close inspection). Truly awe-inspiring.

Here's a wonderful collection of 20th century American illustrators -- every name is worth clicking on. It's wonderful to see how much advertising used to be illustrated by hand, in oils, watercolor, pencil, pen and ink, as opposed to the absolute totalitarian hegemony of photography in advertising these days.

Here's a wonderful collection of story illustrations done for Reader's Digest about 50 years ago. Most are beautifully rendered and composed without being overworked.

Lastly, a friend sent me a link to I'm Learning To Share -- a blog about music, illustration and culture that's a lot of fun to nose around in.

I'm back!

2008-02-28T22:06:00.001-08:00

Yikes! I took about a month off from blogging -- a record for me I think. My apologies to anyone wondering what happened. Part of the deal is I got a new guitar for Christmas and I haven't stopped playing it. I think some of my sketching time has gone that-a-way. Between work, family, playing guitar and general laziness, I had a brief sabbatical from the sketchbook.

Lily reading to me

2008-01-30T00:25:00.001-08:00

Kids move around so much, even while doing something relatively sedentary like reading. I was trying to get the bounce light from the table that was reflecting up on her face. She enjoyed reading the books to me. Very fun.

Waiting room drawing

2008-01-07T23:14:00.001-08:00

My daughter had some dental surgery over the holiday. This is her older brother drawing in the waiting room.

Fender Telecaster

2007-12-17T17:41:00.000-08:00

I drew this from memory -- and with help from a Google image search, as a way to remember a great old friend.

I was 16 years old when I first saw it in the front window of a local music shop in Richardson Texas. I had already been playing guitar for six years by then and was playing in a rock band in our high school. My current "axe" back then was an electric guitar my mom found at a garage sale -- an unknown brand with red sparkle paint, three pickups and giant rocker switches. But the guitar in the window was different. It was incredibly simple, very functional-looking, its overall design almost homely. Bright yellow, white pick guard, light maple neck and fingerboard. Something about it reminded me of a popsicle. I suddenly started to obsess about it. My family and I went on a cross-country driving trip that Summer and that guitar was all I could think about day and night. I liked the slab-like thickness of it, the fact that the cord plugged into the side of the guitar, not on top like the garage-sale guitar. I loved the control knobs with no numbers printed on them. Who needs numbers on a control knob? What is this rocket-science or rock n' roll!? I liked the big pickup selector switch -- reminded me of the kind of big electric switch you'd see on a Saturday morning cartoon. Then there was that mysterious removable chrome bridge cover that no one ever seemed to keep on the guitar. The guitar was called a "Telecaster". I learned that the company that made the guitar, Fender, also made another guitar, the "Stratocaster", which was spoken of, amongst my teenage rock n' roll peers, in hushed tones -- the super-guitar (super, in this case, spelled with an "$").

About that time, I read an interview with the legendary blues guitarist Roy Buchannan in Guitar Player maganzine, I think. He talked about the Telecasters he owned, techniques he used, about memorizing the neck and scales, circle-picking, controlling the Telecaster's volume with your pinky while playing, about the wonderful tone and sustain it has. I became more obsessed as I read it.

Finally I went to the big guitar store in East Dallas with the intent to somehow get one. It became painfully apparent that I couldn't afford it unless I put the guitar on "lay-away", which meant the guitar was taken off the shelf and I had to make payments until it was paid off, then I could have it. Being a teenager, I could only afford a used instrument, which, thankfully, they had in abundance. The first one I saw was black, fairly beat up, with a dark rosewood neck and a Bigsby whammy bar. No, I wanted something pure, unaltered; I wanted that yellow Telecaster I had seen a year before in the shop window. In another room there was a nine-year-old Telecaster: maple neck, yellow (or as Fender calls it, "blonde") -- exactly right, perfect. It was $275, including its rectangular wooden case. That was more money than I had ever spent on anything. An insane amount of money. To make matters worse, I had to give them my garage-sale electric guitar and my Sears acoustic guitar as the down payment. In other words, I had no guitar to play until I managed to pay off this crazy debt.

The next month I emptied my life savings account for the second payment, and worked weekends for my father to scrape together the third; but there was no way I could make the last payment of $70. I was depressed, freaking out that it would go back up on the sales shelf for someone else to buy. My parents took pity on me and supplemented the last payment. Finally the used Telecaster was mine!

The guitar played like a dream. It was three times easier to play than the cheap guitars I learned on. A simple truism occurred to me: the higher the quality of the tool, the easier it is to use. Playing those other, inferior guitars was like running track with weights on my legs. This guitar, by contrast, was running without weights, in fact, flying. It was a relief and a joy to play barre chords -- somehing that used to give me hand cramps. And I loved the sound of the guitar. The neck pickup sounded soft and mellow, switch to the bridge pickup and it became harsh and bright and cut through the air like a buzz saw. When the volume knob on the guitar was cranked all the way up (I would say to "10", but remember -- no numbers) and run through my Peavy tube amplifier the sound got fat and fuzzy; turned down just a little and it became bright and sharp again. Back then I played with a guitar pick, and I could store an extra pick, should I drop one, behind the pickguard for quick access while performing. We played a lot of hard rock when everyone else was playing disco, and the time I spent playing my Telecaster was pure heaven.

Two years later I sold the guitar back to the big guitar store as a down-payment for a new Rickenbacker 4003 bass guitar, which I still own and love. But I'm haunted by regret for getting rid of the Tele. Interestingly, the 1969 Fender Telecaster I paid $275 for in high school is now worth about $6,000 -- that's more than a 2000% appreciation!
Sometimes I think about getting a new one, but that ship has sailed. My interest these days is in acoustic finger picking style blues guitar, not electric ear-bleeding rock (although many great blues musicians have played Telecasters: Muddy Waters and Albert Collins being two fine examples). For now I'm just happy for the glowing memory of having once owned a really fine instrument. Maybe if I still owned it I would take it for granted.

Joanie at lunch

2007-11-29T21:57:00.001-08:00

We scheduled our eye exams together today, took a trip down to our old neighborhood in Hollywood and had lunch afterwards. It was one of those restaurants with the butcher paper "tablecloths". Our nine-year old came with us and told me to "draw mommy" on the table before the food arrived. Luckily I had the trusty 6b clutch pencil and smudge tool. I had a little trouble focusing because my eyes were still dilated, and messed up a little on her right eye, but it's a pretty good likeness I think...

Jack doing homework on Sunday

2007-11-18T12:43:00.000-08:00

I drew him looking a couple years younger than he really is for some reason. It might be the angle, or maybe I foreshortened him too much, hmmm. He's writing a presidential speech for school. I like his scholarly posture.

Car wash people

2007-11-11T16:45:00.001-08:00

I took my old car to the car wash yesterday. There's a lot of waiting around there and I always feel guilty that I could be spending my time more productively, although the environs don't inspire much in the way of art. So I thought, why not sketch the people waiting? I had to be fast and furtive here, so I fell back on the trusty 6b pencil and smudge tool. It still is the fastest way for me to get the information down on paper, as much as I do miss the color.

Lunchtime watercolor

2007-11-07T14:39:00.000-08:00

They stayed out there long enough to do a quick color study. If they had picked up and left it would have made it much more difficult. Lately I've been addicted to color for some reason.

Linemen

2007-10-23T08:38:00.000-07:00

Typically, to my memory, the hottest time of the year in Southern California is early September. It got so hot last month that the heat, coupled with the overuse of electricity (air conditioning) actually melted the wires on the pole in the backyard. The guys from the Department of Water and Power came right out, thankfully, and I sketched them as they worked. They were quite friendly and were amused by my sketching one of them up on the pole, and their equipment on our lawn.