Old Red 
The former county courthouse for Dallas.
It's a museum now.

I love these old sandstone buildings.   

Well, they are old by my community standards; but, historically, Texas cities are not that old.  

It has a presence that modern building, for the most part lack.  It's located next to some more recently constructed buildings.  

The building is all platonic solids, and most buildings constructed in the 1900's were based on platonic solids.  Neoclassical architecture was the dominant influence at the time.  Although, this building appears to be more expressive than a disciple of neoclassicism would produce.

Why in the world is any of this important?  

It's not.

I'm simply looking at a picture and typing my thoughts.  Love, history, and what makes a good image.

The blue in the background, with a daytime moon, is almost half the image.  The moon seems to accent the fact it is a sky.  The blue is deeper at the top of the image, lightening up as it forms the edge of the building.

The green trees at the base set off the reddish color of the sand stone.  And the building is clearly in between the trees and the sky, setting up a sense of depth.

The building itself can be represented by cylinders, cones, circles, and cubes.  The joints of the stonework form natural lines accenting the curves of the cylinders and the flat planes of the walls.

Drawing this building would be a challenge; but it is not unthinkable.   Once you look at the image, and and forget about the building, and pick up a pencil the way to draw will eventually become clear.

The difficult part of drawing from life is not the physical act of drawing.  

The hard part is letting go of what you know your subject is.  If you do it right, drawing is a way of reshaping your perceptions, so that you are not filling in the gaps with what your mind is expecting to see.

Study of a lemon slice.

Take for example a lemon.  A lot of people draw it as an oval or even a sphere.  It's not really curved in that sense.  The outside edges are flat planes that curve at the intersections.  That affects how the light reflects and how shading defines the form.  

This is only important to an artist trying to depict a lemon in whatever medium.  Like me.

Oil painting of a lemon slice
Untitled 
Early 2000's

Portrait of a Lemon

Monoprint of Lemon