Here Come the Excuses!

In order to meet one of my goals for the year, I need to post approx ten times a month. This month, the first month, started off quite well...only to fumble near the end. I want to blame it on an unwanted, and unexpected, "guest" we had this past week, Mr. Norovirus. It wasn't a terrible visit, not as things can get with him, but my productivity stopped. And I know, I know, that I could have kept going and was just using this as an excuse to sit around doing nothing. And that's basically what I did for a whole week! Nothing. And I was bored and I wanted to sketch, yet still, I did nothing! Why do I torture myself like that?

Okay, so about the Toucan. He started off as an experiment. I sketched him with a Pentel Pocket brush, then used some water-soluble oil pastels that I had from long ago, which I rubbed with my finger. I was trying to achieve something similar to Roz Stendahl's Stabilo Tone sketches. Well, a combination of poor quality materials, and inexperience, resulted in a really ugly, smeary drawing. I took it in stride though, it was my first try! So, I scanned the picture and using only the blender tool in Painter 10, I smeared it around until I got this. If it hadn't been just an experiment, I think I would have worked harder on the composition, which, now I see is rather awkward! What I loved about the toucan from my photo reference, here, is how very black his his feathers were and the colors were incredible!

And these are the sort of doodles that come out of me when I watch television--which I've admittedly done too much of lately! Above is ballpoint pen with a General's Sketch and Wash pencil, then watercolor added. Below is just ballpoint pen. I started of well with the layering, but then the movie was too good and I ended up not doing any more.

Just some ballpoint pen sketches...

I don't have very much to say about these. I started off trying to get more layering into my sketchbook, as shown to me by Wil, even tried some typography. Things I learned: It takes a long time to fill a page when you're layering; and when drawing fur, it is probably not a good thing to start off with solid lines, as you have to work very hard to get the fuzziness back in. I had a slight headache when I began, which steadily grew worse and led to some cheating by filling in a lot of space with black. I tried to fill some with writing too, but the words wouldn't come to my aching head. My favorites are the cat and the ostridge (or is that an emu?). The boy? I didn't do him any favors, AT ALL! It was the first sketch of the page and I obviously was just warming up!
This is a small sketch done while my husband and I were cooking dinner. I think we can all guess who did most of the work! It's approx. 2" X 2" on a cheap writing pad.

After using a ballpoint for so long yesterday, I cannot wait to use my pencil again. Or some watercolor.

A True Story

To say that I was uptight about my grades when I was young would be a massive understatement. I was a good student, but I fretted constantly. I was also disorganized. You know, one of those kids walking around with papers falling out of their notebooks, opening lockers to have the structural integrity of its contents give way. I was always forgetting my homework at school, or losing it on the way home and would have to rush back to the school to pick it up, or call a friend.

(I should also mention that I grew up in a rural neighborhood. This was the late seventies, maybe early eighties, so people still felt safe enough to leave their doors unlocked.)

One day in middle school, I forgot my homework again and decided to call a friend. I didn't know him all that well at the time and had never been to his house. He told me that I could borrow his book, just come over and get it.

My parents drove me to his house and I ran up to knock on the door. Somewhere deep in the house, a woman yelled “COME IN!” This wasn’t uncommon; we weren’t afraid of intruders. But, you did sometimes feel a bit awkward, knowing the person was probably expecting someone they knew to walk through the door. This was one of those times for me. So, instead of going in, I knocked again. I got the same response. I reluctantly walked in and looked around but no one was in the room. I called out, “Hello?” The same voice yelled, “I’M BACK HERE!” Even more awkward! But I started my way back towards the voice. And I didn’t see anyone, anywhere. It was eerily quiet. Finally, I got to the last room, and when I didn't see anyone, I said “Hello?” again.

Imagine my surprise when a yellow and green parrot screamed out, “I’M BACK HERE!”

The next day, I went to confront my friend about not being there, but before I could say anything he asked me what had happened; he had been waiting for me. I told him, “YOUR BIRD IS WHAT HAPPENED!”

He said,“What bird?”

The above parrot was drawn from a morguefile.com photo, free use section. It is watercolor and colored pencil on hot press paper.