Sidestreet

I got a 15 minute break this afternoon between errands, and stopped to try out a new drawing pen by Prismacolor (heads up, people -- THEY make a 0.05 in sepia!) in the Handbook Journal. I parked in an attorney's empty parking lot, directly under the Do Not Park Here Unless You Are Visiting This Attorney sign and sketched the patio of Sidestreet Tavern over the top of the fence. (Shown darkened here, just to view a bit better.) For some reason I find sunbrellas compelling ... maybe I need to do an actual PAINTING of them. Novel idea.

Okay, back on track ... so then I took it home and added watercolor washes ...

... okay. This particular brand of sketchbook really ISN'T for me -- for watercolor at least. Big yuk on the colors and the wimpy values I get with this paper! I just work too wet and with too many glazes.*

Later this afternoon I picked up a couple of pieces of #140 Arches hot pressed and one piece of #90 hot pressed (just for variety, you know) and am going to be sewing something up. Quickly. Toot-sweet, don't you know. I have an outing planned ...
:-)

* I ended up trying to work in some darks with my handy-dandy carbon pencils... WAY overworked.

**Uh, another note. Why in the world did I sketch in the patio light on a pole? Sigh. I knew as soon as I did it that I'd made a mistake. If I was a clever Photoshop-er I would have taken it out of the scan and you would never have known.

ISO Perfection

A mandarin orange, one of two that I picked up yesterday at the Fresh Market. Either that, or a lumpy orange circle. You choose.

I'm busy searching for the perfect sketchbook for an outing and thought I'd go ahead and give the Handbook Journal (that so many of you love) a try. Not what I'm looking for, unfortunately. The paper just doesn't stand up to the abuse I offer, although I love the 5 1/2" square size. Hmmmm... just the size to use if I decide to bind my own ....

I really like all that nice space out to the side of the orange (or lumpy circle, whichever you chose.) It looks like a nice place to jot down all those complex physics equations that rattle around in my brain. Or grocery lists. Or describe the weather. Whatever -- Funny thing is, this book makes me want to use it to sketch people -- it feels friendly, and not precious, precious. Just not right for my outing, I don't think.

For a beautiful INSPIRATIONAL sketchbook video, go visit Cathy Johnson's web site and find her youtube videos of her April/May sketchbook -- these are really wonderful, and I'm so thankful that Kate shared them with us!

Pencil sketches

I'm back! And although I said there would be art today, I'm only showing pencil stuff. I'm playing with some mixed up acrylic stuff on watercolor paper, and it is waaaaay slower going than I'd expected and there's nothing to show with it but a bit of a mess right now. Meanwhile -- I realized I was letting my day planner Moleskine go to waste, so I started using the paper for pencil sketches. I think that I'm going to find a way to carry a little one and a pencil with me from now on -- I'd forgotten how fun quickies with a 2B or 4B could be!

Of course I have to figure out how to keep the pencil from getting all "smeary" as I don't relish the idea of spraying fixative every day in a sketchbook. Not that it matters....

Anyway, maybe I'll manage to do something Christmas-y tonight! How is everyone doing with their shopping? So far I've managed to avoid the mall COMPLETELY.

Shell

So... if you ever want to accidentally challenge yourself, try drawing a shell. Yikes! Still, a drawing was done and all that good stuff...
(The colors scanned very oddly, too. That big orange stripe isn't really there in the original, although I suppose something is there. Funny!)

When Totally Stuck

When totally stuck -- draw the pen.
Yep. STUCK. Diahn and I met up at Panera last night. We've done that regularly, but have spent most of our time drinking coffee, eating, talking, people watching ... you get the picture. Drawing has been sadly neglected and we realized it, so last night we promised ourselves from the onset that we would draw. Diahn did beautifully -- I struggled.
SO. Yesterday I made a promise. It went like this:

"As of TODAY -- I promise to draw every day for the rest of the month. That's six more whole days. And I will post them."

Tonight I drew a leaf. I drew the cat asleep on the sofa. I drew this pomegranate. I'll not bother showing you the others ... this will have to do!

And I'm going to blame part of it on the pens ... I kept having to throw them away and dig into my bag to get another! Seems that when they just sit for a while they dry up. Sheesh.

And I just HAVE to share THIS clever little idea from Design Sponge -- found via a link on Lorna's blog.

Spring Break

Uh oh. I've been on a three-week break from Saturday watercolor class and had an assignment -- an assignment to do start / work on / do (?I never figured it out exactly) a full sheet piece. Actually, it is an assignment which I have NOT TOUCHED. I scrambled tonight to play catch up, but just am not getting it done. This is supposed to be fun. I'm going to KEEP it fun, too. So, I'm going to have to confess to my WC teacher that I AM, in fact, on good authority, a slacker.

I can only bring these full sheet sketchy things that are IDEAS for paintings based on photos from last year's spring break at the beach...

I particularly like this figure. She's ready for ANYTHING. But I kind of want to paint these in acrylic or even oil rather than watercolor. It's like they deserve something rather more solid than watercolor ... or something like that.

I'm also playing with this from a photo of a red bicycle parked in the middle of the street. The shadows were great, but the photo doesn't give me quite the details I need to be as accurate as it ought to be for a full sheet. Still, I can kind of imagine the shadows being these wonderful masses of interesting colors just dropped in wet-in-wet, with the bicycle almost being secondary ...

We'll see. I find that I am ready to get back into the swing of painting big.

And these count as today's drawings! I skipped yesterday because I spent the evening in a neighborhood meeting campaigning AGAINST speed humps -- they are dangerous crazy things, people. But that's for another day, another post, another blog ...

Birch Color Study

Finally -- tonight some time to work on painting and sketching! It's so frustrating now to try and re-create the sense of our trip to Canada. After some stalling and hemming and humming and self-distracting and working on other "non-Canada" art, I finally did this quick color study with pastel pencils* -- smeared them around with some water -- then added more pastel and fixative -- then some white acrylic -- and am beginning to get the feeling back! Up north in these woods is one place where the shadows really and truly are BLACK -- once I remembered that I felt more on a roll. And that amazing little streak of turquoise peeking through the clouds on the right? It's true. Yep, the sky there is truly turquoise along the horizon. Even my very literal and non-poetic hubby said, "it feels like you're on top of the world or something..."

(*Carb-Othello pastel pencil in Raffine sketchbook -- not the best surface for pastel, but very nice for a quick study!)

Skull and Bones Society

Well, not exactly. Just two middle aged women -- okay, one middle aged and one early aged, but both looking pretty good for their respective ages, no matter what those ages might be -- oh, what the heck --

NOT the Skull and Bones Society.

Just two darned good looking women out running around for a few hours this morning at the McClung Museum. Yep. You've got it. Diahn and I met for a few hours today to do some drawing and we settled on bones. I love bones. It was especially exciting to meet Lucy (above) who was surely a little dynamo in real life. If I've guessed correctly, based on what little I know of skeletal features as they relate to muscle size and function, she probably could have bitten your hand off with very little effort. Don't let that sweet little grin fool you! Although she was just as cute as she could be...


There's something about bones that I just love. Diahn loves fossils and rocks -- so next time (I promise, Diahn!) we'll be drawing crinoids or something along those lines. I'm looking forward to it, and feel like we've found a treasure trove!

After the McClung museum we scooted over to KMA to see "Sordid and Sacred" ,the exhibit of Rembrandt etchings of beggars. If you get the chance to see this, go, go, GO! It was fantastic. (I'm scrabbling around looking for triple-aught-one pen...) ;-)

I may be laying low for a bit -- still busy but it's calming down and it's nearly time for some R&R. Thanks for all the thoughts and encouragement!

(You may see that there is a scribbled note to "look up John Gould". Well, I didn't know who he was, but they had the most beautiful collection of his hand tinted prints, which were all just fabulously rich with color. Check him out here! He's now on my list of "artists that I must study up on.")

Happy Fourth!

So, I'm working on a painting of a cow, of all things. We saw her just off a local rural interstate exit, and I just fell in love with her. (So sweet eyed and creamy white that I've even named her -- Miss Vanilla Cupcake -- although sometimes I call her Miss Vanilla Cream Tart -- at any rate there's a general name thing happening here between the two of us.)

Of course, I looked like a crazy person, out there in the middle of the country, climbing around in the weeds taking photos of COWS ... just waiting for somebody to come up and say, "What's the matter there, girlie? Ain't you never seen a cow before?"

And actually, I find that while I've seen plenty of cows, I've never actually SEEN one before trying to draw this one. What a skull these animals have! It's going to take a lot of sketching before I'm ready to paint. (Weirdly I begin to understand some artists' fascination with cows ...)

And click here for something REALLY special that I've saved to the Fourth of July holiday. Artists, you will love this video -- how a very very special woman uses her art in an amazing way.

And -- Diahn is on Moleskinerie! Wow, that girl gets around, doesn't she!

Memorial Day Weekend

Memorial Day morning at Knoxville National Cemetery, which adjoins the historic Old Gray Cemetery in downtown Knoxville. I had to go into work for a couple of hours, but did so early enough that by the time I got off the sun was clear up and beautifully bright, and before the arrival of the daily haze we've had in the heat this past week. This monument is known as The Tennessee Monument, The Wilder Monument, or the Union Soldier Monument -- depending on what source you use.

Note: For more information about the monument at the Knoxville National Cemetery, click HERE for a rather interesting history, and, amazingly, the only photograph of the monument I could find on line. I think I'm going to fix that problem, and will be posting a photo soon! If you read the information, you'll note that I took a bit of artistic license with the monument, shortening the tower by about the height of the figure, in order to get the bits I wanted to fit on the page. I wanted to get the top against the sky -- the arches with the door and wreath -- and, most importantly, the nearby bright red, white, and blue flag.

And here are some Canadian geese along with their latest addition at Norris Lake on Sunday. There were several families with baby geese, and they were so cute! Ma and Pa Goose stayed close by, and didn't hesitate to take turns hissing at anyone or anything that came too close to Baby Goose. Since it was a holiday weekend the lake was MUCH too crowded for our taste. Still, we went out to do some start-of-season cleaning and maintenance on the boat and had to take just a short run up the lake and back. NEXT weekend, if the weather holds, we'll be out on the water playing! I do love summer ...

The technical bits: I did this with 2B and 6B pencils in my new Raffine sketchbook -- the very large one (10.4 " x 15.2"). There's not been enough time yet to pass judgement on this sketchbook -- the paper seems a bit more textured than what I'm used to, but I do love the size! However, it doesn't fit onto the scanner, so I had to use the camera, and found that it's much easier to photograph a watercolor than a graphite drawing. I had to adjust the contrast some to get these to look right, and this is as close as I could get it!

How to Get Into a Rut (And Back Out Again) part 1

Girl Studying -- pen drawing on legal pad at the coffee shop in February.

So, on the last post I promised to discuss my recent artistic slump and what I planned to do about it. This will probably take several posts. Be Warned...

How it all started -- or at least reached it's deepest low --

Sometime last year, Diahn and I decided that we really should at least TRY entering some work into shows, galleries, etc. We had one major hurdle, though -- no Artist's Statements! Yep. That was our biggest problem at the time. Everybody wants an artist's statement to accompany any work that is submitted. Sounds easy, doesn't it!?

The research began.

We read about how to phrase the artist's statement, happy with the advice that the wording should not be too "artsy" or esoteric, but short, simple, and direct. Later, of course, we were mightily confused when we read actual examples of artist's statements. I'm pretty sure now that we just got a hold of a bad batch of the things to begin with, but quite frankly, folks, some of these statements were just weird. Intimidatingly weird. They were about resolving social issues, political revolt, and dangerous furniture. I kid you not. And these people would never kid you -- they are some Serious Artists.

Diahn finally got hers done -- it is a beautifully crafted straightforward piece of writing. Nothing in it makes me worry that I'm not thinking hard enough about how horrible the world is or how I'm just too blind to see the wretched (and dangerous) inter-connectedness between a tulip dying in a vase, genocide in Africa, and my perilous bedcovers. HER artist's statement is happy. It describes her work. IT works. I would have just plagiarized the darned thing, but we would probably be submitting pieces to the same places, so that simply wouldn't do. For the first time I wished she lived in California -- then maybe I could get away with it ...

After six weeks of agonizing over writing my artist's statement, it became apparent that my lack of direction in this area had colored the rest of my life. Everything I painted or drew, everything I had ever painted or drawn, everything that I even considered painting or drawing seemed trite ... petty ... silly ... goofy ... lame ...

At our mid-February coffee meet-up I told Diahn, "I can't write an artist's statement because I AM NOT AN ARTIST." I meant it. Really. It was making me feel like THAT.

Smart girl that she is -- good friend that she is -- Diahn reached over, pulled the legal pad out of my hands, and said, "STOP."

She officially absolved me from writing an Artist's Statement.

I immediately felt better, and I feel better still.

So, here's my Artist's Statement -- not refined and ready for a gallery application, but it IS the truth:

"If I see something that makes me happy -- I chase it down and I draw it.

"When I see something that makes me smile, or makes me catch my breath for a second -- I sit down and paint it.

"Usually I paint the places, people and things that I know.

"Sometimes I paint the places, people and things that I wished I knew better.

"I do it because it's fun, it makes me happy, and BECAUSE I WANT TO.

"Take it or leave it."

Love,

Linda ;-)

EDM Wings

A quick little study for a watercolor painting I'm considering. Fits right in with the Everyday Matters Challenge this week for "draw something with wings." All this painting and less drawing is beginning to take it's toll -- I had a tough time sketching a portrait (also as a study for the painting) because my drawing skills have gotten so rusty. Which clinches it for me -- it's important to draw SOMETHING everyday!

(technical stuff: Graphite & Cretacolor AquaMonoliths on Fabriano Studio paper with a litle water added)

Passing Fancies

Just a thought...
Happy Friday to all!

Peony

Despite the wonderful colors of spring, I can't seem to stop working in black ink in this book.

The other day I went to this web site for Tazo tea looking for a certain tea (I'm hooked on their Giant Peach tea and Mango tea) -- if you love a beautiful and thoroughly thought out web site, go see this one. It's one of the best I've seen in a while. Be sure to have your tea leaves read while you're there!

(Technical bit -- 0.05 Staedtler black pigment ink in Moleskine sketchbook -- and it's my next-to-the-last page! There's something satisfying about finishing a book and starting another!)

Magnolia Bud and Branch

The magnolias are budding and will soon be in full bloom. When we bought our house years ago, one of the first things I did was cut a magnolia bloom from the tree in the front yard.
Bud losing its outer covering while the first petal opens outward.

First Lines of Backyard Sketch

Several people have asked how in the world I drew the chipmunk in the previous post, and I have to be sure that nobody thinks I actually drew that much detail in one sitting. This is the original sketch, with the bird detailed quite a bit more than the original few lines, and the chipmunk's ears started. I scanned it at this point for my sister's benefit, because I KNEW she would ask -- it wasn't really intended for everyone to see, but since it's been brought up ...

I was fortunate to spot the little chipmunk just a few feet away from me while I was sitting with my sketchbook in my lap. He froze for a few seconds -- long enough for me to do a quick few lines blind contour style, and remember enough for a few more lines after he dived down into the hole. I found reference photos for the coloration from this point, and then went back to his hole to draw the ground. Now, if you look closely, you'll see that the chipmunk could as easily have been a squirrel if I'd "fleshed it out" a little differently ... and don't let an ornithologist get CLOSE to that bird drawing, because he would probably tell you it's not a bluebird at all, no matter what color it is! And, looking at the bird, you'll notice that there are several different lines for the ovals of the head and body, and I really have no idea what a bluebird's beak really looks like -- the bird itself is really pretty generic! :-D

Back Yard

Minnie the Mooch
"She calls it 'Hi-dee-Hole' "
(Chip Calloway)*

Bluebird and chipmunk in the back yard. I started with quick line sketches, and then had to look up reference photos for colors (ain't Yahoo Image search great?!)

*with apologies

(Further details: 0.05 Staedtler pigment liner & Faber Castell Polychromos colored pencils in Moleskine sketchbook)

Nature Walk

This week's challenge for the Everyday Matters group is to go on a nature walk* and draw the things you find and pick up. This was an easy one to do and a hard one to stop on! I did the above page yesterday, and couldn't resist this little feather today. I always was one of those who had feathers and rocks and shells sitting on the windowsills -- my favorite 3-D art!

*all from my back yard, which is pretty woodsy!

(technical bit: 0.05 Staedtler pigment liner and colored pencil in Moleskine sketchbook)

Percy the Pug

Percy the Pug -- the "grandpuppy" -- who I fell in love with this past week. We had the best time playing fetch with an old beat up, chewed up, and well loved purple monkey.
When he finally gets tired, like most other babies, he fights sleep. In a desperate attempt to stay awake he will run madly around the apartment in a figure-8 pattern -- what they call the "roast beef run" (it's a long story ...) Finally, when he can go no further, he collapses. What a cutie!

(Note: Yes. He really DOES look like Yoda.)

(The technical bit: 0.1 Staedtler pigment liner in Moleskine sketch book; color added with Faber Castell Polychromos colored pencil)