Finger Twitchings

A Night at the Opera 2: Werther

joelvollmer — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 06:39:58 +0000

Back in December I had my first encounter with live opera and left with a favorable impression despite some mixed feelings about the music. Tonight there were no such qualms. Werther was overwhelmingly beautiful. The voices were huge and always in control, the story was well told, and the musicality breathtaking. There were times when the raw emotion coming through the vocals had me nearly in tears. This was everything I had hoped live opera would be.

On to the sketches…

The night kicked off with the trusty and much loved pilot G2′s in 0.38 and 10 weights. Unlike during the December show, there was no attempt made to keep up with the action as it unfolded. Happily both the sets and staging of the performance were less chaotic this time around so there was more time to study and get in some of the details.

In the second half, the G2′s were replaced with some Akashiya brush pens acquired over the holidays. It was really the first serious run with them and though a little odd at first, as they are stiffer and less pliant than other brush pens I’ve used, they were super easy to adapt to. Though not as flexible the extra rigidity gives them a really nice snappy feel.

By the end I wanted to spend a bit more time paying attention to the story and performances and left things very quick and gestural. These last doodles were with the smallest and most pen-like of the Akashiyas. All in all another stupendous night at the opera. If you’re in the twin cities area and looking for something to do I highly recommend Werther. Now I just need to find a great recording of it.

thumb-nailing pgs 6 and 8

joelvollmer — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 03:50:42 +0000

A first foray into live opera

joelvollmer — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 03:01:15 +0000

Opera has been in residence in iTunes for quite some time now, but never before has an entire opera graced my ears, nor have I ever seen one live. Until last Thursday evening and the world premiere of Silent Night, an operatic rendition of the 2005 movie Joyeux Noel. It relates the tale of British, French, and German soldiers during World War I who disobeyed orders and spent the holiday not killing each other. The experience was, in a word, big. The staging, production and vocals were brilliant. There were a couple issues with the overall storytelling, but then again I’m pretty nit picky about these types of things. Also, it did not end with a fat woman singing and that was a bit of a disappointment. Still… a tremendous and amazing performance overall.

Now I got to see the show in exchange for drawing and blogging about it so let’s take a look at how that went.

My initial strategy was to keep pace with the show on a sketch per scene basis (seen above). It went well at first but with the constant changes in scenery and cast my hand began to hate me a bit. And so…

I decided to go the lazy road, break out the brush pens and chisel markers, pick a moment and draw it as big and slowly as possible. The hand was grateful and I got to pay more attention to the show.

One thing is for sure: I can’t wait for the next time I get to go do this!

Here be giants.

joelvollmer — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 04:59:04 +0000

A little swordplay

joelvollmer — Sun, 06 Nov 2011 02:40:35 +0000

all done with Ween as the background music.

What is your sabertooth tiger?

joelvollmer — Sat, 05 Nov 2011 18:18:57 +0000

It is certainly the question that plagues us all on a daily basis. Or it’s just a really random and odd question in a training packet that makes you think, “I should be able to make something cool out of that.” For now it’s just a doodle.

Did someone say Pac Man?

joelvollmer — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 03:13:33 +0000

Actually, no… they did not. Someone did however ask what the ghosts from Pac Man looked like and that’s pretty much the same. Isn’t it? At any rate, this is what came of the question.

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A night of pumpkin carving

joelvollmer — Sat, 29 Oct 2011 04:20:46 +0000

Last night I was invited to the most gracious abode of the family Gamble for an evening of frolic and gourd mutilation. While others hacked and cleaved and scooped out foul handfuls of muck this doodle of Kyle working away formed. Ideally it would have been a sketch of one of the delightful and lovely female guests, but Kyle was much slower at the whole thing providing more time to accomplish the task at hand. Perhaps next year.

Something random from Fallcon sketch 2011!

joelvollmer — Sun, 16 Oct 2011 05:27:08 +0000

Mike stopped by and asked if I could ink up something random for him. I said yes and asked for three hours. Most of that was used trying to think of something random. I’d think, “I know! Batman!” But then I’d realize that a man in a Batman suit just walked by and that is not really random at a con. This is ultimately what came out. A tiny girl, whose favorite superhero is Wonder Woman, kept coming to check up on the progress as this took shape. She seemed to think it came along nicely. When Mike dropped by to pick it up he agreed. He felt it was sufficiently random.

Belated sketches from the MN state fair

joelvollmer — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 01:53:49 +0000

Sat Sept 3rd. The day started out on the doorstep of my friends as we prepared to leave. As there was ten minutes or so to kill I started doodling some the complex’s landscaping which I would finish by memory the next day.

Our first stop was at the baby animal barn, followed by horses and then pigs and sheep. The cows and sheep refused to stay still for any quality sketches and the pigs started urinating right at my feet. This was a sign that it was not meant to be. I’ll put up with inclement weather, bumping, bugs and many other distractions but bodily discharges will deter my sketching efforts.

Later on we stopped and visited the butterfly pavilion. If it was up to me it would be called the Papillon Pavilion. Anyway, the charm of being coated in butterflies wore off before the others were done and so I went to sit with the stroller and scribble out part of the midway. After that we took Meredith over to the rides.

We ended our day at the fair with the parade and so we’ll end this installment with the same.