Drawing on Stephen Fell

Chickadee dee dee

Wed, 25 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The other day I put up the bird feeder that my wife had given me for my birthday last month. It’s one of those feeders with a camera so you can see the birds up close.

Within 2 hours, we had a squirrel and shortly after that, chickadees, nuthatches and redpolls. I’m getting more than a hundred pings each day with all the hungry birds that come to feed.

Here’s a drawing of one of my visitors, a chickadee who came to rest on one of the lower branches of our oak tree. I drew this on a sticky note to save time and show that you can draw with any kind of supplies that you might have lying around, even when you’re taking a short break at work :-)

If fish were people

Sat, 14 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Last summer was the first time we’ve been dip-netting in almost 11 years. So we’ve been eating our haul of salmon almost once a week this winter, which is probably a net positive for our health. We’re already making plans to go again in the summer, but I couldn’t help but think, at least for a moment, what if the fish ate people?

Time lapse of a fish vacuum packing people.

Recent sketches from the creek

Sat, 31 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

As I walked out onto the Campbell Creek trail, from the entrance near our house, there was a twittering cacophony of birds. The snow crunched beneath my feet, but the sound was no longer audible. I pointed my camera at the chokecherry bush, holding my breath for steadiness and to prevent moisture from my breath condensing on the now cold glass - the temperature was hovering somewhere just above zero degrees Fahrenheit.

Let's draw a kingfisher

Sat, 24 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Hi everyone. Here’s a quick sketch of a kingfisher that I saw a couple of weeks ago when it was about zero degrees Fahrenheit and most of the water was frozen. The cat tail pond, fed by warm runoff was open and active with ducks and this kingfisher. I saw him swoop down over the water several times to get minnows and other small fish.

I spent about 10–15 minutes on this sketch, and the DaVinci Eye app made the whole process so much faster. It helped me lock in the proportions right away—something that would’ve taken much longer if I’d used a grid or other traditional techniques.

A Severed Subsea Cable

Sat, 29 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

We were at the beach earlier this fall at Pt. Woronzof in Anchorage and came across a rather thick cable sticking out of the water.

Here we see a thick braided copper cable with a flexible polymer insulation layer and an outer jacket. My guess is that this cable carried power over to Fire Island at one point in time.

Then kids started throwing rocks at the piece of cable sticking out of the water and I managed to capture one splash right at the base of the thing… and I imagined it like a worm coming out of the water… because I really like Dune.

Playing with Pixels

Fri, 28 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve recently been dabbling in digital tools as part of the creative process. Below are a few of examples of how I used photography and digital image processing to achieve something that I think feels a little different.

Here’s some #pixel art from my walk today. I wrote a python script to pixellate a picture from my phone and remap the colors to a limited palette. I also used Microsoft Paint to manually add some of my own color.

Fall Leaves

Wed, 01 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Fall is a short, but magical time of the year.

For this drawing I used a fountain pen with a bent nib - to be able to color in large areas at a time. The foreground is dark with detailed leaves and gradually transitions to light through a few ripples in the water with the trunks of a few trees.

I would be lying if I said this was completely my original thought. It is based on a photo that I took, which was in turn inspired by an M.C. Escher print, which was included in a biography about the artist that I have kept in my possession since I was a teenager. I was recently re-reading this book to help me fall asleep at night - something it does very well because it is almost as dryly written as a history textbook.

Turnagain Arm

Mon, 22 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Fishing Vessel

Mon, 15 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Self Portrait

Mon, 08 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Self Portrait

Childlike Experience

Mon, 01 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Sketches from home

Sun, 31 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Here are a few sketches from my sketchbook from a recent trip home to Alabama.

The old oak tree

Parents back yard

Another sketch of the oak tree

Luna

A quick beach sketch

Mon, 19 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Here’s a quick sketch of the beach from memory with no references used, drawn with pencil in my traveler’s sketchbook. When you’re drawing a place, it almost feels like you’re at that place. I probably could have spent more time, but I really just wanted to get the idea on paper as fast as I could.

Bird drawing practice

Sat, 17 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

A drawing of a cardinal

On the beach...

Wed, 19 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Here’s one from our trip to Seward last weekend. This is on the beach in front of Miller’s Landing. I recorded a YouTube short for it here.

Tugboat and Barge

Sun, 16 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

https://youtube.com/shorts/59JW8Kt2giQ?si=ow9JLhk43oR07vkF

Hey Everyone

Here is a sketch from a photo I took on my phone back in 2021. We must have been on a walk or something on the coastal trail and I decided to take a picture of the barge in the water.

I think it may be two vessels - a tugboat and a barge sitting next to each other.

Anyway, I used a 0.5mm mechanical pencil with a graphite hardness of ‘B’, blending stump for the clouds and a 3B pencil for the dark spots down in the deadly mud flats below.

Let's draw a squirrel on the fence.

Fri, 07 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Hey everyone, Steve here for another drawing session. If you’re an artist, I’m going to let you in on a little secret - get a camera and keep it handy. It can be the one on your phone or something more advanced. Take a lot of pictures, and try to get a feel for what makes a photo interesting because a lot of that skill also applies to drawing.

Over time, your photo library will grow and you’ll have a lot of material to work from - it feels a lot less like cheating when you reference your own photos.

Mountain sunset sketch

Fri, 07 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Hey everyone,

Thanks for tuning in. It’s a sunny, but lazy Saturday so let’s do a quick sketch here in my sketchbook. For this one I’m using a 3H pencil and a 12B faber castell matte pencil. The scene I’m drawing is along the turnagain arm just south of Anchorage. You can see a few chunks of ice sitting in the frozen mud.

Also a quick thank you to everyone who came to my birthday party last week and for the thoughtful gifts and wonderful artwork, I am grateful to have such good friends.

A Self Portrait

Sat, 18 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Me Drawing Me

Is it weird to draw yourself? Every drawing is a form of self expression, but this is the most direct form of that expression. For me, drawing is a hobby and I tend to focus more on the skill than the creativity, but the result is the same, the manifestation of an extension of the self that persists afterwards. And that is one of the reasons I keep doing this.

Inkvember Doodles

Thu, 14 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

A doodle from my noodle. New Video on YouTube.

Another Squirrel Sketch

Sun, 06 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Squirrel Sketch

I’ve got another drawing of our squirrel friend. Here she is eating some almond flakes, strategically placed on the fence where I could snap a reference picture.

This drawing was done in a small sketchbook with various wooden pencils and a fine eraser. I started it a few months ago and left it unfinished for one reason or another.

Here is my YT Short, finishing up the sketch.

Isometric Cityscape

Sun, 06 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000

An isometric cityscape, the likes of which I might have drawn as a kid, contains elements from real life - a reflection of random thoughts on paper. In the upper right corner is a garden that we built this summer in our front yard. It was designed to match the neighbors’ garden. On the left is some industrial process equipment, similar to things I’ve seen on job sites when I worked in the field. There’s also a train, because in the future there will be more trains.

Turnagain Arm

Thu, 30 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000

One day a few weeks ago, we were driving the Seward Highway and had to stop for a rock slide. I decided to take a picture and later I drew it in my sketchbook.