Drawn the Road Again

Author: Chandler O’Leary

  • Mountain mornings

    Mountain mornings

    I love coming back to a place I’ve already sketched, and giving it another go—I always end up with completely different results. These two drawings, for example, were done from precisely the same spot, almost exactly two years apart. Even though I’d been there before, and already spent a good amount of time studying the…

  • Dinner with Shiro

    Dinner with Shiro

    Note: I think this might be a first on this blog—showing you a drawing I did only in (gasp!) pencil. But the night I did this sketch, I only had a regular notebook with me, and I needed to work fast—there wasn’t time to dig around in my bag for a pen, so I reached…

  • Steeple chase

    Steeple chase

    You probably know by now that when I draw in my sketchbook, I’m usually looking to fill a whole page spread with a finished scene. Sometimes, though, that’s just not possible. On the day I made this sketch, I was riding in the back seat of a rideshare van, craning my neck to catch any…

  • Lurking in doorways

    Lurking in doorways

    You already know that I have a thing for doors, but I also love sketching through doorways. It’s one thing to compose a scene within the rectangle of a page spread—but it feels like an extra challenge to use the doorway itself to frame a scene within a scene. I find myself doing this sort…

  • Under the archway

    Under the archway

    Unlike Monday’s mystery door, this is a door through which I pass so often, it’s become routine. I know this place so well that I took it for granted, barely noticing the beautiful detailing around the entryway. Well, a sketchbook is a good cure for that—there’s no better way to appreciate something than to spend…

  • On the threshold

    On the threshold

    Whenever I travel, I know I’m only seeing a small fraction of wherever I am—usually streets and exteriors. I’m always wondering what lies on the inside of the buildings I pass, and when I’m lucky enough to happen upon an open courtyard, I feel like I’m getting a glimpse of a city’s hidden, inner life.…

  • Edible elements

    Edible elements

    When I’m on the hunt for tasty sketch compositions, I tend to be attracted to repeating elements. Usually this happens with architectural details like identical rowhouses or gothic archways. Sometimes, though, it comes in the form of breakfast—with humble slices of bacon arranged in a pretty patterned row. Hope your weekend is full of quiet,…

  • Four-legged harbormaster

    Four-legged harbormaster

    When I sat on the pier to do this sketch, I only meant to draw the boats—I’m a sucker for bunches of masts and linear elements like tielines. To make sure I could fit the whole mast in the picture plane, I started at the top and worked my way down. It wasn’t until I…

  • Bungalow blues

    Bungalow blues

    I was up and working in the studio well before the sun this morning, since I have a big deadline looming—so today doesn’t much resemble the day I did this sketch at my friends’ beach bungalow. But I tell you what, right now there’s nothing I’d like better than to put on some PJs, put…

  • Gallery of wonders

    Gallery of wonders

    Of course, there’s the kind of “museum” founded by snake-oil salesmen…and then there’s the real thing. If you really want to get a taste of Northwest art and anthropology, there’s no better place to start than the Royal British Columbia Museum in Victoria. The museum is huge, with natural history dioramas, city artifacts, an IMAX…