Color

Janey of "Janeys Journey" (see the link to the right) and I have started a discussion about buying art supplies. This is a little WC sketch I did a couple of years ago using just Burnt Sienna and WN French Ultramarine. (Well, except for the obvious red and yellow triangles.) I keep it around to remind me to "Keep It Simple". The scan doesn't show the variety of colors, but gives the general idea. A lot can be done with just a few supplies!

Strawberries and Sugar

We got the first good strawberries of the season today. While cutting them up (then coating them in sugar and swirling in whipped cream ... yum!) I just had to leave a couple to do a little WC sketch of them. DH walks by and looks disapprovingly at the three strawberries still on the plate:

DH: Are you eating those?
Linda: No, I'm drawing them.
DH: What if I want to eat them?
Linda: You can eat them later.
DH: What if I want to eat them now?
Linda: Did you already eat all the ones I cut up?
DH: No, but I might.
Linda: Well, you can have these then.
DH: Seems like a waste of good strawberries.

I decide that he has a point, and eat them myself before I finish drawing the seeds. Sometimes a girl has to do what a girl has to do.

Star Magnolia

This star magnolia bush blooms early every spring, shortly after the crocus and just before the jonquils fill out. I cut a few pieces this morning to do some quick sketches, knowing that they will not last long in the house, even in water. The blue bottle looks quite wonky on this page -- I did it directly with watercolor, and had my sketchbook flat on the table. Really, it looked perfectly straight from my perspective at the time ... it gave me a huge laugh when I picked it up and saw all the weird angles. The bottle looks like IT is blowing in the March wind!

Having read a great hint about using an imaginary clock face for drawing roof angles on buildings on Richard Bell's site -- Wild West Yorkshire (see link to the right) -- I used the same principle on the petals of the flowers, and had the easiest time I've ever had drawing them. If only I had used the same technique for the bottle!

Dopey: EDM Weekly Challenge

The Everyday Matters Weekly Challenge this week is to draw a toy. Not being much of a toy person, I considered drawing my skis, my bike, my jeep ... then I remembered my old Dopey doll somewhere up in a cabinet. Not really my style of drawing, but it was fun to visit with ole' Dope a while. Dopey is a well worn, truly dirty and loved old toy! Molded plastic face with soft head and body -- Gund Mfg Co, ca. 1958-60.

Friday: Starting home

Friday we headed south and east from Frisco, back down to Colorado Springs. On the eastern side of the Rockies I am fascinated by the short, twisted, tangles of trees that grow in clumps on the flat plains. They are nothing like the tall hardwoods of home!

Wednesday: Vail

Wednesday we skied at Vail. The mountains are tall and the ski resort is large; my favorite ski spot was the "China Bowl." No photograph or attempt to capture memory with pen or paint can begin to convey the size and beauty of this place.

Thursday we skied at Keystone. It is a favorite with the locals and has a dedicated following of "out-of-towners" who return faithfully every year. It is one of the harder resorts, and I will readily warn anyone who goes there that the blue (intermediate) slopes would be, for the most part, considered blacks (advanced) anywhere else. Despite all that, we had a good time, and after resting for a while in the afternoon went back out for a bit of night skiing. It was a magnificent ending to the ski portion of the trip!

Tuesday: Breckenridge

Monday we skied at Copper Mountain -- a small resort, but one of my favorites! There hadn't been snow in the area for about a week and a half. Still, the skiing was good.

Tuesday we went to Breckenridge and a snow storm came along with us. I sat it out for a bit while DH kept skiing. He (and several others in the bar where I waited, happily, I might add) reported near white out conditions up on the peaks for a short while. The news reported later that the upper part of the mountain got 6 inches of snow that day.

Sunday: Historic Georgetown, CO

Sunday drive from Colorado Springs to Frisco: We stopped at Historic Georgetown on the way, with the hopes of seeing some Bighorn Sheep. It is a quaint little Victorian mining town, full of buildings with false fronts and gingerbread, and little shops carrying imported "fancies" from Russia and Sweden.

Uncle Stan

We went to visit Uncle Stan in Colorado last week for a few days before and after our annual ski trip. He is one of the funniest people I know! He's tall and thin, and as long as I've known him has had long white hair and a white beard and moustache.

Cup: EDM Weekly Challenge

Coffee cup for the Everyday Matters weekly challenge. I did several, but this one was my favorite, even if it isn't technically good. For some reason it most looks like a cup of tea really looks sitting on the table in the early morning!

Fruit Stand (in Progress)

It has been slow going this past week. Due to a rather strange incident involving too much coffee, a stack of interesting papers, and a ladder, a week ago this past Sunday I broke my toe. Therefore, every evening after work I spent my time lying on the sofa with my foot obediently propped up on pillows and packed in ice. Hard to paint in that position.

I'm at the scary part of the painting -- time to proceed very carefully because if the values are wrong here it will ruin everything! It's been much trickier than I had imagined to work in color from a black and white photograph. (I'm still trying to figure out what some of the fruit is supposed to be.) I have a sneaky feeling that the white coat on the shopkeeper will be too light for the painting, and had even considered changing it to a darker or more subdued color; then I looked at the high shine on the gentleman's shoes and knew -- his coat would be WHITE.

Oh, if no one ever sees this painting again we'll all know it was a bust. Good learning, but a bust none-the-less. This has been my first attempt at anything "real" with oil pastels and I've loved how they are a "globby" and vague rather than detailed. Fun stuff.