The Weather is Making Me Smile

I know, it's been eons since I've posted anything! But, if you knew how perfect our weather has been and how seldom we are treated to days like this, you would understand completely my need to be outside for every possible waking moment! I've been swamped with projects (just finished residing our garage) and loving every minute of it. I had a birthday back on Sept 22 and went absolutely nuts ordering things online. Most of it has arrived, but would you believe I am still waiting on one of them? I mean, really, THREE WEEKS? If it doesn't come today, I think I'll scream!

So this first image above is just a sketch I did on some recycled printer paper while testing out one of my presents, a trail stool from REI . I was afraid to order this stool, thinking it would be another one of those things that just collect dust in my studio, but I'm so happy I did. I've already used it quite a few times and I love it! The view is of my neighbors house from my back patio, with the corner of our back deck showing. Not really a great view composition-wise, so it probably won't be developed any further than this. Other presents included two more books, Mary Whyte's Watercolor for the Serious Beginner, and Charles Reid's The Natural Way to Paint, six tubes of wc, a scrubber brush, a box of drawing pens, and an antique set of 100 pastels. which my grandmother passed down to me, and were her grandmothers, pre- WW2. Haven't played with them yet!

This is more of a doodle type page, I think. The woman is from imagination, the man from a photo at utrechtart.com of Jody Dole, the photographer. The rest is just notes I was taking from reading the articles on the site.


These were studies done from photos of a clothed model that I got off Matt Archambault's site.
That is a wonderful site, though he has upped his prices to $19/month. (I am no longer a member, but do highly recommend!)

I debated whether to show this one. Nothing really great about it. The figures are once again from posemaniacs.com. The cartoon skeleton, well, I was just being silly. The girl at the bottom, my only touch of color on this post, was sketched from the news, mostly from memory as she was gone just as I started to sketch. The quote is a comment that Winna made on someone else's blog. That person was also suffering from a block, so this hit me perfectly and I had to write it down. (Thank you, Winna!)

I hope to have more color for you next time.

Feet and Hands

A certain theme runs through most of my sketchbooks--because wherever you are, if you don't feel inspired by your surroundings you can always fall back on these...hands and feet. They are supposed to be one of those difficult tasks when drawing people, so why not get all the practice you can; right? Let me tell you, I do get lots of practice!

This sketch appears about once a month, almost always exactly like this...sketch too close to the top of the page to get the whole thing in, holding the side of my sketchbook. You think I would be tired of doing it but somehow I find it more interesting than my surrounding! Maybe I should take this as a sign than I need to redecorate?

This would actually not be my own feet, and I really enjoyed getting a view I wouldn't otherwise be capable of getting. These are my mother's feet. She had them pulled up onto the couch as we watched "Castle". She had figured out what I was doing by the time I got to her bottom foot, was itching to move, so I rushed and couldn't seem to get the size right. It appears smaller when it should, in reality, appear slightly larger as it was closer.

This may look odd at first. I was sitting in my backyard trying to find something to sketch. So, in a very unladylike manner, I threw my leg up onto the table and sketched. Luckily no one can see into our backyard as I would never sit like this in public!! Could you imagine doing this at a restaurant? Of course, I would hope you would be inspired to draw something other than your foot!


Decided to add watercolor, even though it wasn't watercolor paper. The plants in the background are supposed to be my tomato plants and that is asparagus in the very back, next to the wall. Edited out were my rosemary, chives, and parsley. The gray of the concrete didn't scan well, so it loses a little of the depth.

So, how often do you resort to your hands and feet?

Where did the beginning of March go?

Sorry for the lack of posting lately. It isn't that I haven't been drawing-I have! But, a lot has been copying the works of other online artists whose work I enjoy. I can't post those. Plagiarism and all.

Another thing slowing me down is the writing part of blogging. It makes me procrastinate. I wrestle with words; we have a tumultuous relationship. Sometimes they come easily, sometimes they don't. I do better when I'm reading a lot, but that hasn't been the case lately. Too busy sketching!

Yesterday I drew a very loose pencil sketch of my husband tilling the soil in our garden. It had energy and I was excited by the results. I sketched it in my exacompta sketchbook which takes light washes fairly well. Then I started adding a little watercolor. Starting with my husband, things were going fine. But then I came across a portion of the page which must have had something on it because it didn't want to accept paint. I wish I had left just my husband, the tiller, and the dirt painted because I couldn't fix the sky and the fence after that fiasco. I went over my pencil sketch with a micron pen in sepia because the loose pencil lines got lost in all the mess. The paper will fall apart if I do any more, so it must stay this way.

This little girl is Sarah, my uncle's Mexican chihuahua. She's taller the most chihuahuas you see in the US, and doesn't have that roundness at the top of her skull. And unlike most chihuahuas, she rarely barks. That's my kind of dog! This is done in my moleskine sketchbook in pencil, with a little bit of colored pencil added. I don't like the way it scanned. In my sketchbook, it doesn't appear to have the dark dark outlines. I think it's because I did a little with black colored pencil, which scans better than the graphite pencil. This was done from a photo, fairly quickly. I tried not to get too fussy with it.

These two sketches are also in my moleskine sketchbook. (You probably remember the watercolor dude-thing, whatever he is, he got taped in here a while back.) I drew the girl from imagination with my Lamy Safari fountain pen and noodler's eternal black. After it dried, I added tone with a uniball micro which is water soluble, and then brushed with water.

The cat is Eddie, the one that adopted us last summer. We couldn't let him in our house because of our other cat, so we found him a good home with one of our neighbors. He is now a very happy, and spoiled cat who refuses to take one step out their door! I think his previous owners may have abandoned him and he's afraid it will happen again. He's done in 3B pencil.

This month marks the end of my first year of blogging and being a member of EDM. To celebrate, I'm preparing a give-away. I have three books and the winner will get to choose the one they want. I should have that post up in the next day or two. Hope you'll check back soon!

Oh, one more thing! For those of you who haven't already heard, Dan and I have started a new blog to showcase a project that we've started together. We are mailing a sketchbook back and forth from Florida to Texas. Our purpose is to challenge ourselves to improve, and stretch ourselves as artists. There is something about doing these exchanges, which pushes you to do your very best. It will be nerve-wracking at times, but that is the very thing that makes me try harder. We hope you'll stop by to visit, here.

Not so perfect, but it's something

I didn't participate in the 23rd Sketchcrawl yesterday. I wanted to, but things came up unexpectedly. So I ended up spending quite a bit of time trying to post to the new EDM Superblog2. Thus far I've been unsuccessful. While taking a break away from that frustration, I went to my backyard and sketched. This is fountain pen on notebook paper. And I wasn't trying to be so perfect. You'll notice the car on the right...I started to draw the part that showed on the left of the tree, then got interrupted before starting the part on the right. I wasn't really back into it when I drew that side, and it shows. Oh, and the wheelbarrow ended up floating somehow, so I put a box looking thing under it. Things like this happen to me a lot because I rarely look down at my paper until I add shading or texture.

By the way, I pretty much ruined the drawing of my husband at Starbucks. Maybe I'll try to fix it later.