Penn's Sketchbook

Chimes Tower at Longwood Gardens, Watercolor. 9"x12". Here's a step-by-step look at how this watercolor landscape was made.  Inspiration was rooted in many family visits to Longwood Gardens outside of Philadelphia. We had ice cream near this pond that features a small waterfall and a bell tower from which musical chimes can be heard playing. Step 1 I sketched out the composition, placing the tower in one of the thirds of the image.  Step 2 I placed washes of blue for the sky and green for all of the areas of foilage. I also placed base colors for the tower, dry ground, and stones.  Step 3 Next, I used richer and darker greens to make shadows in trees, bushes, and ivy on the tower. I also began coloring shadows in the tower. Step 4 I painted more shadows under leaves and stones to suggest detail, using a variety of light and dark greens.  Step 5 I painted shadows and details for the left half of the wooded area

Tyrannosaurus Rex. 9"x12" Watercolor. After seeing photos of scaly Tyrannosaurus Rex skin, I painted the picture above using colors and patterns inspired by other large reptiles. Tyrannosaurus Rex means "tyrant lizard king", although it wasn't much like any lizard today. It's resemblance was more that of a dragon walking on two feet. At 40 feet long and weighing 8 tons (14 metric tons), tyrannosaurus was enormous. It stood 12 feet tall and had bone crushing teeth the size of bananas. It isn't known whether T-Rex was a scavenger or a fierce hunter, but its forward pointing eyes could be indicators of a keen sense of sight and razor sharp focus on its prey. Here's a second Tyrannosaur painting and a reference photos taken in the wild. Mother Tyrannosaur leading her young. 6.5"x 9" Watercolor. Wild Tyrannosaurus Rex skeleton. Smithsonian c. 2018.

Learning to draw again as an adult is a tad bit different from learning to draw as a child. There is a freedom of imagination and expression in childhood drawing that gets overshadowed sometimes by the need to control and plan in adulthood. A watercolor sketch from direct observation Some say that learning to draw is learning how to see, but that isn’t quite right. It is important to see certain aspects of form, shape, light and atmosphere in order to better observe what you want to represent realistically. But learning to draw is all about learning to control lines, shapes and edges on a surface in order to build a picture of what you see. So drawing involves much more than seeing. Drawing is a constructive and organizing activity that communicates ideas. In this way it goes beyond seeing and simple observation. It is related to speech. It organizes lines and shapes on a surface so that something new can be seen, felt or understood. A cave drawing organizes lines so that viewe

Jonathan sketching Drawing is a form of entertainment that goes way, way back in the history of humans. It's also a powerful tool for imagination. Computer and AI assisted animation are simply advanced forms of imaginative drawing. I like to use drawing in service of the imagination by drawing what I'd like to see in a narrative. My son Jonathan enjoys movies and imaginitive adventure. So Saturday night before bed, I told him we could get our shared big sketchbook off the book shelf and imagine we were going on an adventure. I asked him what we should start with. "Draw a jeep," he said. So I drew a jeep driving down a rugged path. Jonathan then drew some trees. He asked me to draw some dinosaurs; a dilophosaurus spitting green venom, a brachiosaurus eating leaves, Dakota Raptor running through the trees, a pterodactyl sauring in the air. "Draw an Indominus Rex," he asked after all the others. "Cool!" was his response when I sketched somet

Field Stream. Acrylic on canvas. 11"x14". 2018. "Field Stream," located in rural Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, was a place where as a child I could observe the created beauty of nature. This painting depicts a stream running through a farm field in Gap, Pennsylvania, on a misty early Spring morning. The cows and mules are in the barn at this time and except for the song of robins, there are few of the busy sounds that will soon break into chorus when Spring moves toward Summer.

Longhorn cow.  Pen and ink sketch.  2017 I took photos of the steps taken to draw this longhorn cow for day 4 of Inktober. We encountered this very pretty cow during one visit to Lake Tobias. The materials I used were: a cell phone photo, sketchbook, .07 mechanical pencil, kneaded eraser, Faber Castell ink pens and brush pen, and a water brush filled with a mix of reddish watercolor ink.  1) First, I drew a rectangle box to contain the shape of the body and a triangle that would contain the shape of the head. I then drew straight lines to mark off angles and body parts. Next, I began drawing lines to define the cow's form. 2) I drew lines within the straight line boxes to define the animal's form and parts. 3) After the shape of the cow and its parts were defined, I began to draw little details and mark areas where shading and color could be added later. 4) I outlined the pencil lines with ink and used a water brush filled with colored ink to add co