June 29, 2011

    This is a sketchy drawing of a blow torch. Inside one of those cute shield shaped signs many old items used, it says "Clayton & Lambert MFG. CO. Trade-Mark Detroit. Mich. Made in U.S.A. Pat'd Jan. 4, 1921". The near thing is angled and has a thumb depression on top that seems to indicate it gets pumped... to build pressure, I guess. It also has "oil" printed on it where the plunger goes into the angled pump on top of the gasoline tank.  
    I tried to post this last night, but either the site was having trouble or my blog on the site was having trouble... part of the way through typing the above paragraph, the message below the post window changed from "Draft saved at x PM" to something about how the draft was unable to save properly. I tried copying, closing and reopening, getting off and back to my blog in various other ways... all things that might, to someone else, be obviously useless maneuvers, but I was hopeful... Then it started saying "Bad Error" at the top of everything blog related! I kid you not:  "Bad Error". I felt reprimanded; I had not only produced an error, but a bad one. "No no! Bad!" It felt ominous, sort of like "Bad Move"... I quit with good humor but with bad words...

June 28, 2011

    This is the starboard stern quarter of a sail boat named the Isola Bella. The thing to the left is a winch and is incorrect because it alternately had rope on it or had the rope thrown aside, so that I never really managed to get it down correctly and gave up... It's got a winchish feel, at any rate...

June 27, 2011 Continued

    Here is the finished grapnel hook... apparently I was incorrect in calling it a grapple hook. I always thought one grappled with problems and adversaries so that the hook thing pirates used was a grapple hook, but not so... It has 0.7 KGS written on it. The weight? It's a solid little chunk - the blades fold up and the collar slides down to lock over the tips or rotates to lock them open.

June 26, 2011

    This is a grapple. There are some very interesting boat thingies and old tools here... this one being a boat thingie (the technical name). We have begun to have a thunder storm and there's no light where I was sketching this, so I'll have to finish this one off tomorrow. To be fair, I should finish this one And do another since this really didn't take very long and isn't complicated. We'll see if I feel like being fair...

June 25, 2011

    This is a cypress stump that had died, was dug up by the wave action, and washed up on the river beach. I rescued it and it sits in the yard as sculptural driftwood. It has no bark but plenty of cracking, sanded smooth lumps and even a barnacle.

June 24, 2011

    This is the same sketch of the yellow fishing net float stuck all around with fishing lures, but I have finished adding the lures on this side, one laying down, and the hooks for the lures hidden around the back. 
    As I wrote earlier, I'm having to put these images in with a camera and cable since this laptop doesn't have the software for the scanner here (if the scanner here works), so the current images will have a tint. When I am home again, I may replace the camera images with scans. 

June 23, 2011

    This is a yellow net float with fishing lures stuck all around it. I just did three lures tonight and will do some more tomorrow.

June 22, 2011

    Yesterday included helping pack a truck to drive to North Carolina for a visit. By the time I got here, I was tired but determined not to get further behind on the drawings, so I selected an item from those in a china cupboard and drew it... then discovered I couldn't get an internet connection on one laptop and couldn't get an image to load on the other. Today, with help via phone from my son, I've gotten the laptop I'm used to connected, but am having to use cropped photos of my sketches for posts. Mainly, that's going to mean the images will have artifact tints from the camera, the lighting, maybe weather dependent (I like to photograph images in indirect sun when possible) etc.
    This is last night's drawing. It is a tiny ceramic elephant found on the beach of the Pamlico Sound in N.C., and it's got those biffs and dings (and out-right chunks missing) that give it character... while still retaining enough of the elephant to catch the beach-combing eye. On the other side the face is intact, but on this side the front is sheared off, leaving the whitish ceramic interior showing. The rest is glazed in a (pitted) translucent blue glaze that collected and made darker runs in the creases. I think the deal with the tail is that it's supposed to be wrapped to this side around the elephant's ample hind quarters. The figurine is hollow with a seam around it. 
    

June 21, 2011

    The first day of summer in COLOR...

June 20, 2011

    So - the first day of summer and school's out. Nothing serious or elevating for today!

June 19, 2011

    This is a candle my son has. I think it looks more like it should be the skull of an ape, but I expect it is intended to be human.

June 18, 2011

    I 1) didn't feel like drawing today, and 2) felt like trying some color, but not high effort color. We had just been to the farmers' market, so I had three bunches of beets (among many other things) and decided to try one of the beet bunches in crayon.          
    Some people do wonderful things with plain children's crayons, but the one time I'd cracked this box before, I hadn't liked them at all. Not the child-like delight I'd anticipated! So... I gave them a second try, and . . .  I still didn't like them! 
    At the risk of sounding inane, they were too waxy. Not in a reasonable, can-be-burnished waxy kind of way, but in a too-soft, won't-hold-a-point at all and builds-up-On the "hills" of the paper (is there a technical name for those?) and can't be pressed into the "valleys" kind of way... in a can't-be-layered because it won't stick kind of way and sometimes a pushes-around-instead-of-adhering kind of way. Some of the colors were all wax and almost no pigment, and since the color selection in the box obviously hadn't been chosen for artist use, one needed to be able to layer. Wait! I checked the brand again, and it's some off-brand called Color Zone. I guess I picked them up impulsively, thinking I'd give them a try... at least they aren't Rose Art!
    I felt these beets were pretty awful, but then again I had picked a handicapping medium so maybe I just wanted permission or an excuse for turning out something awful! I played around with these (below), and although they seem to give some interesting effects, their (in)abilities make it doubtful they'd be worth the effort to memorise which ones layer okay over which other ones, and so on. I would, however, think it would be worth-while to try out some good old Crayolas instead... they might work much better!

      You can clearly see in the scribbles above that some colors would go over certain others, and some were horrible hosts. The only thing that promised any degree of control was to use pencil (pen wouldn't work) to actually incise into the wax as well as lay down graphite. It would not allow for shading - apart from hatching - however.

June 17, 2011

    Here is the first iris and an early Virginia wild lotus (also called a pond lily or spatterdock). The iris is in an old-fashioned ink jar (diamond-shaped) and the lotus is in a tiny pot made as a sample by a fair potter.

June 16, 2011

    I was too tired to work on the camellias, and in fact I was so tired I watched some TV in the evening... which I very rarely do... so I just plucked a bit off the viburnum outside (which I had been admiring earlier for the wonderful red berries forming) and during commercials I drew a new start off of the bit of viburnum laying on my sketch pad.

June 15, 2011

    Camellias in a jar. This actually took me about 30 minutes and that's pretty much with the pencil moving relatively rapidly the whole time. It actually takes a great deal of time just to lay down the graphite, never mind being careful about it. I expect to finish this tomorrow, but that's long enough for one night when it's getting late, I'm tired, and it's been a pretty frustrating day... 
    Not to mention that by this evening I really felt like I'd done my sketch worth even if it was pooled somewhere in the pine needles:  Much earlier in the day I set up to work on my pond painting - water jar, brushes, paint squeezed, easel and canvas - and had done maybe 20 minutes of work when suddenly it started to Rain. I do mean Rain as if someone opened the chute on a water tower. It had been overcast for the past hour, but no thunder, no initial sprinkle, just Whoosh. I grabbed everything and ran for the house, but when I got inside I discovered almost all of the paint I'd just laid down had been washed off! I guess Everyone's a critic... 
    

June 14, 2011

     This is a quick - 15 minutes - sketch of my son watching the live feed of the lunar eclipse. From the right, the first band is still light, the next is greyed (shadowed), the third is blushing orange from passing through the light coming around the edge of the earth (our sunsets around the leading perimeter) and the last is the dark of deep shadow. It was fascinating how it became darker before it became lighter, then the orange took over as eventually the only light to hit the moon was light coming through all of the earth's simultaneous sunrises and sunsets for those parts of the world having sunrise/set during the eclipse. You can tell the commentary was informative, too...

June 13, 2011

     These are two ceramic salt and pepper shakers. There are holes for salt and pepper in the far sides of their heads, and larger holes in the bottom of the figurines for adding the salt and pepper. The corks or plastic plugs are missing. 
    They say "Bunny Hug" on them, so I've always known they are supposed to be rabbits but they do look a bit like a rabbit and a pig hugging. Both sets of ears are too short, but the one on the right actually looks like a bow and the noses aren't quite right for any critter except maybe a teddy bear! 
    These were probably made in the 1940s or 50s, and they say something like "Van Trangen" (but it's filled in with glaze and hard to make out), and "Pat. Pend." in addition to "Bunny Hug". It seems odd someone would be able to patent shakers just because they "hug", doesn't it?

June 12, 2011

    I squinted and stared... It was amazingly difficult to tell exactly what it is that makes the back of a pile of beans visually fall away, or go back down toward the table. Given the small distance involved it's not the usual little tricks like a change in size or sharpness, and it's nothing about the lighting or shadows on the beans or table. 
    To figure it out I had to maximize some of the variables; make the lighting harsh, move it around, increase the height of the pile... Ah! Increasing the height of the pile did it - when the pile is higher there are clearly two factors that affect the way we see it. One is that just at the sharpest part of the change in the far slope, the beans are a bit more foreshortened and/or overlap just a bit more so each one presents a bit less of itself to the eye even though all orientations are present all over the pile, including there... and the other is that on the portion of the pile that's sloping away from you, you no longer see the small dark spaces between the beans - the darkest little triangles and wedges of shadow.
    My difficulty was in part that I had begun with a rather flat "hill of beans" so that the relevant variables weren't readily apparent, and that I had begun with a fairly overhead view which also minimised the usefulness of the visual cues. Since most of the bean shapes were already drawn and I didn't want to mess up the paper enough to erase the ones at the visual horizon, I couldn't entirely put my discovery to good use. For example, the right side of the pile doesn't conform as nicely to "pile" shape as the left side where I could incorporate some of the shape and overlap cues. There was no problem placing the "looking Into the pile" shadows over the entire front. 
    The hindrance of being limited by what I'd previously drawn didn't bother me as much as I might expect since the whole thing still felt like an experiment. I can't say when it will help me out - drawing piles of gravel? I hope not! But perhaps it will, and maybe I've gathered a bit more in the line of practice in looking at things and decoding for myself the mystery of how we see.
   

June 11, 2011

    Sometimes I can't really decide on something to draw, since I want something a little challenging or at least not too simple, but something that's not going to take simply hours either. I need something that's not too repetitious and that's going to be interesting (to me at least), although the reason for the item being interesting to draw may not always be apparent.  Some days nothing quite "takes". 
    Today I noticed a bag of beans on the counter, but since I have done a few (two?) bags now, and just wasn't ready for another one, I dumped them out and immediately was amused by the idea of drawing a "hill of beans" on a day when nothing was seeming to amount to much. Some days I guess it doesn't take too much to amuse me, either...
    Repetitious, yes, but in a varied kind of way... and there are interesting aspects to a pile of beans. For instance, how do I make them "pile up"? Since it's a small, shallow pile I can't use shape or size diminishment to press down the far side of the pile, so it's got to be shading. I've quit at this point since that's a fair amount of drawing for the day, but I'll work on this tomorrow.
    

June 10, 2011

    Yesterday I picked up a magnolia bud doomed never to open because of a hole drilled in the side by an insect. Out of curiosity I peeled the petals back (some of them ripped a little) to expose the not-quite-mature center. Despite being immature, the lemony vanilla fragrance was rich and soothing throughout this somewhat brief sketch.

June 9, 2011

     I haven't done a landscape drawing in awhile and I'm trying to keep some variety going, so here's the shore of the Potomac river at Leesylvania... on a dreary grey day. It would probably have been a bit more visually interesting if there had been some shadows. If I were to paint this, for instance, I'd probably want to work in some nice drift wood in the foreground and "unflatten" the right edge.

June 8, 2011

    This is a closer view of the parrot vase I got from the Smithsonian shop several years ago to hold larger things like woody branches of azaleas in bloom. It's also in an earlier sketch showing a corner of the living room with a terrarium and lamps.

June 7, 2011

        This is a magenta vegetable brush with black nylon bristles. From the front he's a remarkably friendly looking fellow, but wants to lay on his side. Of course, this image file is named "skull brush" which brings to mind strange images...

June 6, 2011

    This is the second half of a fabulously rich-tasting cantaloupe. It was fabulously fragrant, too; making me imagine cantaloupe as a subtle background element in a floral perfume... of course, the bees would probably bother anyone wearing it. Not to mention the strangely enticed farmers' market devotees, who would feel a vague compulsion to trail along after...

June 5, 2011

    I pulled up a sprig of some type of tiny yellow wild clover on a walk the other day and stuck it in a plastic bottle I kept from when someone had bought drinking water on a car trip. I really like this thin, cheap plastic bottle - I wish it were glass or something durable. The shape strikes a nice balance between "cute" (it looks sort of like a little alien) and clean, attractive design, and is just the right amount of water for plenty of practical purposes. 
    Once again, I can see - only after I scan and post the drawing - where I have distorted the shape of the bottle by flattening the right side a bit. Maybe toward the end of the year I might go back and revisit the drawings I've done and correct some things... if I think it would be a good exercise at that point. I'll wait and see...  

June 4, 2011

    Two bunches of bananas.

June 3, 2011

       Not, perhaps, terribly convincing ice cream... but I was working against time, after all. 
    My son said if I didn't hurry I'd have a Dali version (melted) of ice cream! Oh - and that's a meringue on top. 

June 2, 2011

    Today I sketched a bag of dried cherries. 

    I tend to pass through phases while I sketch:  Sometimes I'm contented or even in a meditative zone, sometimes I'm frustrated, sometimes I feel like it's going okaaay... but that it's kind of knife-edge as in it could go wrong any moment and I feel like I'm in a balancing act. Times like that can build up tension so I tend to take momentary breaks; put down the pencil, look around, stretch, eat a few dried cherries, adjust my chair and pick up the pencil again. . . What?!? What the heck? The cherries are completely different! How did that happen?! Arrrgh....

June 1, 2011

    Being very tired, I'll end tonight's catch-up postings with this one. I probably spent the most time on it of the three posted tonight... 
    It's my favourite of the three, and only partly because I took my time with it. Partly it's simply because I am so fond of this little leather change purse. The little pink bow and playing-card heart features really make it! 
    Mainly though, it's because I am always so tickled when a sketch just serendipitously turns out to seem to have some subtle message or symbolic contrast... more so than when I deliberately attempt to include something of the sort. It just feels like a little gift! The change next to the unzipped skull was intended to "square out" the composition and provide some other circular shapes in other sizes, but during the sketching I realised I liked the many associations one could come up with around the images.  

May 31, 2011

    As I said earlier, I spent several days this week at my daughter's place helping her get her apartment ready for someone else to stay in it and herself ready to spend the summer taking a class at the Marine Biology Lab at Woods Hole. We stayed very busy and generally ended very tired! 
    This snowboarding boot was one of the many winter things that had to be moved out. It has a hard beetle shell outer portion with - so far as I can tell - purely decorative ribbing and arches. 
    I didn't have enough energy to really finish this patiently, so much of the shading is fast, scratchy and who-cares; but only a minor part of the practice is supposed to be in patience!

May 30, 2011

    These are three bitter melon slices stuffed with ricotta; not as successful as a stuffing as is Mexican hard cheese, which is fairly salty and complements the bitter nicely.

May 29, 2011

    I found a cable I needed to get a photo onto the computer, so here's the third session of painting on the pond painting. I made some progress today, but I also fought myself back and forth a great deal, which wasted time. 
    For one thing, during the second under-painting session I had put in a small tree to the right of the pond. It is visible in the scan I made of the lower right corner for May 27. I need something bringing the eye back into the canvas from the right, so I decided to include one of the low limbs of a magnolia that is there, but whose limbs don't reach quite that far. That made the small tree visually confusing, so I painted it back out, but I didn't get around to painting the magnolia limb back in yet. 
    A second battle ground was the second set of plants in the back of the pond. There are arrow leaved plants (probably hyacinth) growing out of the water, and young wild sunflower plants growing behind them. The two did not have sufficiently distinct foliage, which was also visually confusing, and the rather stiff ungainly form of the sunflower plants was unattractive. I've painted them out with a dark area over which I'll paint the forsythia that grows behind the sunflowers.
    Aside from those two cases of back-tracking, I added detail pretty much all over, but still haven't established the main areas of value... oddly, the details are going in and since they'll comprise the lights and darks, the composition will be built with them. I'd generally start the other way around. Hmmm. 

May 28, 2011

    A (plastic) bottle of big brown pills for my elderly dog who is stiff in her hips.