Bexar County Courthouse

This building has always been a beauty.  Completed in 1897, almost 115 years ago, it remains the largest and oldest continuously operating courthouse in Texas.  The architect was James Riely Gordon, who designed a number of Texas' beautiful courthouses.  The style is Richardsonian Romanesque revival, in pink granite and red sandstone.  S.A. has a few other buildings in this style, noteworthy for the heavy proportions (like big fat arches and columns) of the masonry.  A cool building all around.  My grandmother used to work here.

bexar county courthouse under dark south texas skies

Comments

  1. Gillian MowbrayMarch 1, 2011 at 2:13 AM

    This is awesome. I love your style - all that hatching in the sky gives it life. Congrats.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Paul HeastonMarch 2, 2011 at 5:45 PM

    Thanks Gillian!

    ReplyDelete
  3. NSGrafxMarch 5, 2011 at 11:02 PM

    When you sketch something do you start off by doing a pencil drawing? Your art is very beautiful!!! I wish you had a book out-I really have learned alot about shading and hatching by looking at your drawings!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Paul HeastonMarch 6, 2011 at 6:40 PM

    Thanks Grafx. On longer drawings like this I often do sketch them out in pencil first-- just a rough outline so I have an idea where to draw with the pen.

    ReplyDelete
  5. DelphineMarch 8, 2011 at 1:01 PM

    J'adore the way you draw. Art is the same word in french and your Art is universel and beautiful. Merci Paul.

    ReplyDelete
  6. weriemApril 27, 2011 at 11:05 AM

    Amazing blog! Thank you for sharing your drawings!!

    ReplyDelete
  7. Salvador CastíoSeptember 30, 2011 at 9:17 PM

    Wonderful drawing, Paul. You architectural drawings are some of the best I've seen.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

How I Draw Spherical Panoramas

Image
Ever since I first sketched a spherical panorama in the Procreate app, people have been asking for a tutorial, so I've finally put together the steps for how I did it. I had seen illustrations that you can pan around before and I wanted to figure out a way to do one on site, rather than make it in my studio from photo references. I will start by saying that panoramic urban sketches done on location are nothing new. The brilliant G é rard Michel and Arno Hartmann have been doing them for some time, and Arno had already been taking his analog images done on site and turning them into scrollable panos with computer software years before I set out to try this.  Most of the time when I draw in curved perspective I draw "intuitively," meaning I don't set up any vanishing points or use any rulers or grids. In researching this process I knew that to do a 360 degree drawing accurately I would need an equirectangular grid with 2:1 proportions. I found one, along with a ton of...
Read more

A brief history of how I started to "curve" my sketches

Image
When asked what kind of art I make, I say "I sketch what I see." That's it. I go out on location and sketch what I see. Or I stay home and sketch what I see. The "what I see" part is what's important to me. And that brings with it all sorts of other ideas to explore. Because what do we see, really? My style of sketching is a mixture of a few different approaches to observational art-making. There's the still-life/in-studio tradition where the artist narrows their focus on just a small portion of their field of view. There's plein-air landscape painting, where often the goal is to widen the field of view as much as possible and take in sweeping vistas. There's architectural and perspective drawing, where the challenge is to effectively depict human-made spaces with their corresponding geometry in a convincing way. And there's figurative art, where capturing the human form in one way or another is the goal. You can find examples of each of thes...
Read more

How to Build a Dinosaur part VI

Image
Here we are, the sixth and final installment of my long-overdue blog chronicling the Deinonychus I built this spring. Links to the other posts in this series: Part I Part II Part III Part IV Part V When last we left, I was in the middle of the long and tedious process of applying epoxy clay scales.  Since most of the deino is going to be covered with feathers, I decided only to cover the legs, feet and hands.  The head has been covered for a while now. The leg on the left has a priming coat of acrylic gesso over the scales, as I'm going to paint this guy with acrylic paint. Detail of the hands: The whole guy scaled and ready to paint: I started with the legs and arms: There's also a preliminary feather test going on in the above photo. Closeup of the legs and arms.  The paint was applied with a pouncing brush (commonly used for stencils) to minimize brushstrokes. I decided to add a little more color to the face as well: I painted a basic count...
Read more