May 27, 2011

    For my "sketch" today I worked some more on the grisaille under-painting. Unfortunately, I've left the cable I need (to hook the camera up to the computer) elsewhere and the other two options require some software I can't seem to find on this lame version of my once-upon-a-time (pre-Vundo) computer... so after spending an Insane amount of time looking for the software, I just scanned one corner of the under-painting to post. Yawn... night-night...

May 26, 2011

    I was beginning to sketch some clematis when I thought that since their blossoms looked like little skirts and the seed heads looked like crazy hair puffs, I would draw them that way. It doesn't have to make sense...

May 25, 2011

    A scratchy 'what the hell' sketch of my mother's feet. We were watching T.V. in the evening and since it often makes people nervous to draw them (and I can hardly take a photo of my mother without her ducking and hiding) I started to draw her feet... a safe enough subject. Except. She recrossed them after I had the outline for the top foot done, then recrossed. Then recrossed and uncrossed. And so on... I had already (optimistically) started to adjust the sketch for the second move when the third arrived, and finally I ended up with a blind-contour-looking sketch which I have elected to post as a sketch for that day since after all that Is the sketch I did that day and I earned it! Besides, wonkey and mis-sized, my mother's teeny keds-clad feet look strangely cute to me...

May 24, 2011

    I'm skipping the sketches I did earlier to jump to this one... who cares about the order? This one has a story! I had some of my lizards out to sun today and the turtle pushed two of the cages over and they burst open so I was hunting for two lizards when I discovered a nest of baby birds. They all sat up straight and opened their mouths; Momma was here! I let go of the leaves guiltily but soon decided to go in and get my camera... I turned off the flash so as to avoid scaring the babies and crept up, parted the leaves, and couldn't quite focus on the babies. There should have been about three tiny pink frowzy little bodies in the cavity of the nest, but it was just non-descript brown. There was a round black eye. It was Momma, back on the nest, looking at me bravely and accusingly! I released the leaves and backed up slowly... trying not to alarm anyone; act casual... 
    Thwarted, I sat down on the bench. What to draw? I was facing the same old pond, the same old vegetation. I needed a sketch. I didn't have my paints. 
    Just about then, a bird flew out of the magnolia, into the bush for a few moments, out of the bush and onto the top of a branch we've inverted into the garden to provide a "stump" for interest (and, apparently, bird seating). It sat very very still and eye-balled me; so still that I managed to throw down a quick likeness. I wouldn't try to identify it from the sketch, but still... I think it was Pappa bird checking me out and seeing if I seemed threatening. I passed muster - he flew off and I continued with sketching the stump under him. 
    Oh - and a bit later I found the two missing lizards in near-by trees. All's well that ends well... 

May 23, 2011

    These are some sketches of my daughter's wild-type geckos. They were almost constantly moving, so I could only get bits and pieces in two second snatches and then try to touch up each quick "grab" using later similar poses. The top head, for instance, is much too round. Theirs look more like the top left and bottom right head shapes. 
    I'll finish posting my "visit sketches" tomorrow... I am in danger of splitting my head open yawning!

May 22, 2011

    I named this jpg image "deformed jar", which just about says it all. I was visiting with my daughter and picked up this odd little jar, but it was Too difficult a shape to tackle as tired as I was, and I didn't manage to convey the shape at all. It had a round lid and neck but six sided shoulders and foot, and a sort of rounded six sided body. 
    I might try to fix this a little... but right now I'm so tired I can barely post this. I surely won't post all my missing ones tonight yet - I'm just nodding off. 

May 22, 2011

    Today's sketch is actually a first stage under-painting done in acrylics. When I began, it was late afternoon and pleasant outside. I wasn't sure how far I would get before the light faded since it has been overcast lately. 
    It wasn't too long before the mosquitoes found me. They weren't half as bad as the "no-see-ums" though! In case you aren't familiar with them, they are extremely tiny (almost invisible) gnats that have a stinging bite. Frankly, a great deal of what you see here was very rushed, which is fine for a partial under-painting. The "artistic process" was to try to use up all the paint as fast as possible so I could go inside! 
    The pond isn't producing mosquitoes because it has "dunks" to prevent them from maturing. The problem was that someone had turned an old bird bath over, and it was a veritable mosquito factory when I discovered it hidden under some greenery. It will take a few days for these to move on or die off... the no-see-ums though are a mystery and unusual for our yard.

May 21, 2011

     It has been so grey and drizzly the last two or three weeks that even though it hasn't actually been raining most of the time in our particular little patch of the world, the seating has been so perpetually soggy that I haven't found an opportunity until now to finish the pond sketch I started (May 7 title date, May 11 post date).

May 20, 2011

    This is a pyjama puppy from the late 1950's/early 1960's. For those who don't know what a pyjama puppy (or pyjama elephant, pyjama kitten etc.) is, it's soft, not very stuffed, and has a zipper in the belly where you keep your pyjamas during the day. 
    I drew this one without lines. I mean, there are lines making up the shading, but there are no lines defining edges. In other words, I used shading to make areas of value and built the pup up that way rather than sketching it first and then modelling it with shading. If I had been using the side of my pencil or a carbon stick there would have been No lines. 
    I've been feeling like trying out some ways of drawing in a more painterly way, not necessarily because I would like the process or product better but because it would be an interesting exercise, and this is one attempt at one approach.

May 19, 2011

    I've been gone a few days visiting my parents' house. As in the past, I ended up drawing my daily sketch late at night after everyone turned in for the night. This time, the bedroom still held the aftermath of a tea party from my great nephew's last visit. It looked like it had been a rough party - celebrants still keeled over where they sat, crockery strewn about the place... The view is from above, hanging off the foot of the bed.

May 18, 2011

    There have been two reasons not to work any further on the earlier garden sketch. One has been the weather, which has been so grey as to keep the bench wet even though it never quite rains (mists, kinda sprinkles...). The other has been the odour from the dracunculus vulgaris. It's a very cool plant, like a gigantic maroon (almost black on the 2+ foot central spathe) jack-in-the-pulpit, and adds to the tropical feel of the garden, but it attracts flies. The way it attracts flies is to smell like a mule has died in the back yard. It usually blooms for about a week, and the odour is only intense for about two days (I've experimented with ways to tone it down to no avail), but this cool damp weather has had it in bloom for closer to two weeks and while the odour hasn't peaked yet, it comes on stronger when the mist lifts somewhat. We have an approach-avoidance relationship, Dracunculus and I...

May 17, 2011

    This drawing is of three stages of the tulip poplar flower. I found all three laying on the path in the park... the old, woody seed stage to the upper right being left over from last year. The bud is in the upper right and the green and orange flower is to the bottom center. 
    I could have spent longer on this, but even so I  would not have filled in all the leaves as I liked leaving some in outline. The paper was becoming the worse for wear. I had set the pad down outside and a few spats of rain had landed on the page. This paper definitely does not handle getting wet; you can detect the buckling.

May 16, 2011

    This is essentially a very heavy block of cast iron with a beaten iron handle. These were heated and used to iron clothes. Now it's an effective door stop.

May 15, 2011

     Here's an unmarked wind up toy - possibly from about the late 1980's considering the "kid" it was gotten for - done in pen, in contour with some shading.

May 14, 2011

     Classic Americana Kitsch... the dashboard hula girl. She's plastic and her skirt is of acid green plastic hair-thin fibres. Yep; she wobbles on a spring.

May 13, 2011

    As a gardener, I think of slugs as voracious pests, but I've also always considered them rather pretty. They have a velvety look and a wild animal print pattern. 
    I've heard they have a plate instead of teeth, but although this one kept opening it's mouth, the edges seemed pliable and the shape variable. Perhaps I should have shown the lower stalks raised or forward, which seems more typical (I certainly had my choice), but this one seemed to be doing some version of "seeing" with the top eye-stalks (which do have a dark dot) and "smelling" or "tasting" with the lower stalk set.
    Unsuccessful in showing the difficult wet velvet look of this big guy/gal (slugs are hermaphroditic), I tried darkening the area behind and above, but that was worse so I had to erase, leaving that area smudgy. At that point, I was also fighting the influence of a whole new medium:  Slug slime.
    Lots of lessons here... I started him/her too close to the centre of the page and had to resort to cropping. Slugs are hard to handle and won't stay on their stick and make goo and yuck all over your paper and I had to resort to cropping. When the slug slime gets all over your left hand due to trying to corral while drawing with your right, it takes lots of time and rubbing alcohol to get it all off... I almost had to resort to cropping...

May 12, 2011

     This is a deer jaw bone I found in the woods. Almost every bone or antler found in the woods will have tiny tooth marks on it from mice and other small critters seeking calcium.

May 12, 2011

    A tube of Crest - about half used up.

May 11, 2011

    A sketch of my hand - palm side up.
 

May 10, 2011

    I have a wooden bowl with a variety of nuts and cones, so I sketched a couple of these... more as a design or array than as a still life in which I would have included shadows to "ground" them. 
    These include an acorn, a cedar of Lebanon "rose" cone, a sequoia cone, an unknown pod, a section of short needles and a horse chestnut.

May 9, 2011

     This is one of a set of six little glass humming birds I bought around Christmas time. They were intended as Christmas ornaments, but I left them hanging up on fine twisted filaments under my kitchen light for the rest of the year... they seem like Spring to me.     

May 8, 2011

     This statue of Pan sits - of course - on one of my stereo speakers.

May 7, 2011

    This is a sketch of the pond in my back yard from a repositioned bench. I drew this much, and decided to take a break for the day. I could just leave it like this or I could decide to revisit it tomorrow or the next day... at any rate, I have a nice place to sit to draw!

May 6, 2011

    Now here's what shells that I find on the beach look like - broken and rubbed by the wave action rolling them around in the sand. This one has none of the top outside layer left. It's all just abraded into uneven white calcium sand castle shapes on the top. No color. The inside somehow retained the shiny layer (tougher? the slickness resisting the sand longer?) but has tiny worm tunnels stuck against the walls. 

May 5, 2011

    This is a large (hand sized) clam shell. It was purchased somewhere... probably Florida.

May 4, 2011

    This is a chunk of branch I picked up in the woods. These branches, with their bark removed, have the trails and hallways carved out by beetle larvae as they eat their way along their dark paths. Some of them look more like netting, some more like strange alphabet characters from an alien language... secret beetle code.

May 3, 2011

    This is a glass insulator used on power lines to cap where wires are exposed at the ends. I don't think they use them any more; I think it's an antique. It's about four and a half inches tall, a lovely shade of turquoise glass, thick and quite heavy.

May 2, 2011

    Today's sketch was a sandwich baggie of loose change and coin rolls. Lots of experimenting... I should wrap a few things up in plastic and try this some more...

May 1, 2011

    May Day should really have been laundry on a line in the sun, or more likely flowers... but instead it's folded laundry because that's how my laundry is this evening and I'm certainly not going to unfold it for the sake of being picturesque! Draw flowers, you say? It's dark out!

April 29, 2011

     These are bits of skin shed from two types of lizards:  A green iguana to the left (with a foot piece), and an Australian bearded dragon to the right - both the spikey piece and the bit with the keeled scales.

April 28, 2011

     This is a marble "chop" my father picked up in Shanghai, China during World War II. There was a small shop that took down your name and carved it into the bottom of a chop you chose, used the chop to make the mark (shown) on a bit of red (of course) paper, and taped it to the side as the label. 
     My father's name is C. Johnson, but when he showed the chop to one of the Chinese men in Happy Valley where he was assigned, he was told the chop said something more equivalent to "John C Son"... and that it would have been the interpretation since they would have said the last name first in giving it to the shop owner, but put it in the middle on the chop (I think I have the story correct). That seems strange, until you consider how we monogram towels and so on (which has always seemed strange to me too!)... 

April 27, 2011

    This "skeleton key", with it's ratty old card tag tied to it with a soft old bit of twine was found in the back of a drawer in an antique chest. It attracted me as an object to draw due to its character and the different materials.

April 26, 2011

     Okay... after a few days of too much to handle, I've done two sketches today to work toward catching back up (as if that's apt to happen quickly)! This is a small carved wooden duck made in Indonesia. 
     I drew it with a woodless graphite. I had been tidying some pencils and discovered this one, so I gave it a try since a friend has had positive things to say about them. This was definately not a fair test though, since this one was HB and I would never have chosen an HB if there had been others in the group. In addition to the hardness, I found this awkward due to the weight and difficulty of getting a proper point, so I had problems with achieving the values I wanted. Nevertheless, I'll probably pick up a softer woodless graphite the next time I'm some place that carries them.