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"My Hand"
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I brought my drawing pad along on a church bike trip in which I was a student leader. I remember doing two drawings, but only completing this one. I must have been too busy or tired to draw much. I can tell that I was noticably younger in this drawing.
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by Ben Scheele / drawn while on a church bike trip
( year not listed, probably '96 or '97 )
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"Cable Chalet"
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I drew this while up at a cabin that our family has distant ties to. I drew it on printer paper because I liked its smoothness and the sense of relaxation you have when using it as compared to a fancy drawing paper. I don't have a problem with using nicer paper now, but I still like printer paper for doing drawings from my imagination. In this drawing I wanted to try an unusual composition, so I brought the focus to the corner of the room.
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by Ben Scheele / created 10-13-97
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"Still-Life"
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I always like to bring something with which I can entertain myself to the Christmas eve gathering at my grandparents' house each year. In this case it was some paper and pencils. I got one of my aunts to draw the same subject opposite of me. It was a fun way to pass the time. I was pleased with the textures and sense of realism I was able to convey. Realism was my main goal in drawing at that time.
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by Ben Scheele / created 12-24-97
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"Poinsettia"
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This drawing was made using a steel nib pen and a bamboo pen which I crafted for the lines, and brushed-on ink washes for the tones. I enjoy drawing poinsettias because they are structured like miniature trees with huge leaves, and they always have an area of new growth. I love this drawing because it feels so alive. It shows a real shift from the drawings I did before my drawing classes at Normandale. I moved past doing mostly objective drawings and added a bit more subjectivity to my style.
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by Ben Scheele / created 2-13-99
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"Spike and Dandelion"
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I bought a nice new newsprint pad and made a goal to keep up my drawing ability. I did a few sketches around my yard near the start of summer of 1999 which I love for their energy and line quality. I like the large 18" x 24" format because my arms are free to move and I can make some nice broad strokes with the charcoal.
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by Ben Scheele / created 6-3-99
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"Stools Under Pine Tree"
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We had just trimmed our pine trees and cleared a bunch of space under them. I documented that change in this drawing. It was a nice place to sit and draw. I like the bold and off-kilter look to this drawing.
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by Ben Scheele / created 6-4-99
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"Sustained Gesture Mark II"
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This was a drawing that I think is significant because I hadn't yet seen the works of Ingres in which he used a much higher resolution selectively in the face of his subjects. I discovered this technique independently, as I'm sure many others have. I think it works just as well for this inanimate object as it does for human subjects.
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by Ben Scheele / created sometime mid July 1999
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"Spike Plant"
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Look familiar? Well it should. We took this plant inside for the winter that year, and it made a nice subject while it was still brown ( or white? ) outside. I used a new set of watercolor sticks for this drawing. They were tough to use; now I know why they were discounted so much. I still liked the energy of this drawing even though the colors were so splotchy. I fixed that using Photoshop.
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by Ben Scheele / created 3-27-00
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"Hostas"
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It was a bright and beautiful spring day when I drew these hostas in my front yard. I was experimenting with using a white pencil to blend the colors together and smooth it out. It worked well to capture the feel of the plants, except it washed the colors out a bit. Sadly, these hostas were buried during construction, but I'll grow some more.
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by Ben Scheele / created 5-19-00
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"Mom By The Lamplight"
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I always like to bring a sketchpad along on a vacation, especially a road trip. We camped out, and I used charcoal pencils to draw my mom while she was reading for about thirty minutes. I had fun with this, and really got in the zone. I was pleased with how the glasses turned out, as well as the overall look to it.
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by Ben Scheele / created 8-28-00
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"Sleeping Through The Storm"
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This was drawn at a campground a few days later and hundreds of miles further. This, like the previous drawing, caught the moment so well that I can hardly stand it. It was a tremendous storm, which ended up flooding our cheap, shoddy, unsightly, insipid, worthless, garantuan Coleman tent, but I used the time before the water got up to my bag to draw my brother who was sleeping right through it all. He was a very good model, and held the pose perfectly for the 45 minutes that I was drawing him. He even held the spit bubbles on his lips for at least ten minutes.
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by Ben Scheele / created 8-31-00
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"Jade Plant"
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I love jade plants. They have a good texture; succulent and soft or slightly rough. They also have enough randomness to their structure to make drawing them very challenging. I think I started this drawing too late and needed to get to sleep to prepare for the next day's classes. Sometimes I draw late into the night, but this subject required a lot of thinking just to keep track of where everything was, so I couldn't keep up the pace as I got more tired. I actually like the unfinished look. There is enough there to keep the eye interested, and the negative space actually gives some respite from the scatter and chaos of the plant. The incomplete top also preserves a bit of the framework which I used to build it up. You can see that I set it up by drawing lines approximately where the trunks ( stems ) were located. Sometimes a drawing process could go on for a long time, but when the time you wanted to spend on it gets truncated, you may still have a great result. It is important to be satisfied with it either way.
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by Ben Scheele / created spring 2001
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"Fake Rose Ink-Wash"
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I wanted to review the ink-wash technique that I had so much fun with in high school, so I took a silk rose, some ink, water, and a brush, and went to it. I didn't remember exactly how I did those paintings; only after recently uncovering them did I figure it out. Here, I waited for the water in each layer to dry, then painted over it and out a bit in order to create the gradation. This is similar to how you would use art markers. In my HS paintings, I used a few different dilutions, and added them while the paper was still wet so that it all blended together better. I did a little post-processing to blur it, blend it, and give it a slight reddish hue, and presto! It's presentable.
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by Ben Scheele / created 6-7+8-01
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"Echinacea Purpurea"
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I learned an important lesson while making this drawing. If you are drawing something that is ephemeral, don't get bogged down with details. You have to work efficiently to capture all the important characteristics before it vanishes. I actually didn't expect this to have that issue, but I forgot to add water to the vase that I put these clipped flowers in. When I returned to find them wilted beyond reclaim, I was left only with the option to work with the negative space of the drawing to give it a bit more of a sense of completion. WWW = Wilted While Waiting.
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by Ben Scheele / created 7-29-01
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