July 28, 2011

    Yes, yes... not much change, but some...

July 27, 2011

     I'm going to be going in a few days for a few days to Woods Hole (what a great name), so I've been busy with things I have to do before then. In the interest of keeping up my sketch a day commitment, but not spending more time than I can afford to on it, I decided to limit myself to about a half an hour. I could do a very simple sketch in 30 minutes, or I could do an installment on a more involved one. I chose to put in the first 30 minutes on a drawing I've been wanting to do, based on a photo I took of a deer skull I found by the shore and placed on a stump with vegetation arching over it almost protectively.

July 26, 2011

     This is a small drawing - about five inches - of an even smaller toy. This toy dates back to the 1960s, is plastic, and bows and bobs when you push up on the base of the stand. Since I got a poodle pup for my seventh or so birthday, we were often given poodley things by friends and relatives.

July 25, 2011

     This is a bag of brussel sprouts. I'm not happy with this one; there is not sufficient feel of a plausible weight and substance to the sprouts. They don't pile on one another and bulge the bag where it presses on them. 
    Sometimes there's not enough time in the day so I rush it, which leaves me less disgusted than when I put some time in to something that stinks anyway. One of the unfortunate effects of a sketch/drawing a day commitment is that if it's a "stinky fish" it still gets posted!

July 24, 2011

     Here's a simple drawing of a single cicada wing. I tried out three different white paints to see which would work best as a highlight on graphite:  watercolor and two white acrylics. As a result, the highlights are rather uneven, but as a test it was useful...
     This wing is transparent with black (and in a few places grasshopper green) ribs. We were photographing two cicadas emerging from their cases tonight and their bodies were the most beautiful iridescent coppers, ambers and sea greens imaginable. The translucent portion of their wings were iridescent sea green. If I can find them tomorrow I'll know if their wings mature to the colors of this one.

July 23, 2011

     This is a feather my son picked up in the park today. It was so hot (90) I wouldn't be surprised to hear all the birds were opting for the plucked chicken look. Later in the day it reached 101!
     This may be from a hawk, but it could also be an owl - I can't guess feathers unless they are pretty signature ones; either blue jay, cardinal, wax wing and so on, or from the tail of the bird. The edges seem relatively soft for a good distance along the length. We frequently see hawks and hear owls there.

July 22, 2011

      Here is the completed coral drawing - a two day drawing using a mechanical pencil with 2B graphite and a woodless 8B.

July 21, 2011

      Again, I'm posting an incomplete drawing:  One that is taking too much time to do in one day. I guess that makes it a sketching a day, doesn't it? 
      This is a branch of coral found on a beach years ago. So far, the coral is all in 2B mechanical pencil and the black blacks are the 8B woodless graphite pencil I've been playing with. 

July 20, 2011

     Here's the second attempt with the 8B woodless graphite pencil. It's kind of disappointing since I rather liked the HB woodless I'd used earlier, so I anticipated Really liking the 8B. I was all set to just love the creamy blackness of it, but I didn't at all! I'm not giving up on it yet though... 
      This small metal dog figurine says J.B on the tummy and is super heavy for the size. It's possibly brass, but I'm not certain, and it seems to have a different metal coating that is worn off in spots. It's a caricature of a bulldog with humongous ears. 

July 19, 2011

     This plastic Russian robot (or PO6BOT as the box appears to say in Cyrillic) was done with a new woodless graphite, 8B, and I really didn't like using it at all. It was too soft to make a nice sharp line, which would have been appropriate for a hard (such as metal or plastic) object, and the paper/eraser/pencil combination was poor. I couldn't get good erasure... it felt almost as if the eraser were greasy and the shading kept clumping as if the paper were grabbing it unevenly. You can see all of this if you blow the image up. I would think the eraser or the paper was at fault except this is the same eraser I've been using, and while it's a new pad, it is the one I've used for the last four drawings without much problem.
    I decided to switch to a different paper and give the same pencil a try again. I used a 2B mechanical pencil for the drawing and this pencil for the darkest values. I didn't love it, but it was a more appropriate use. Both of these drawings get moved to the stinky fish section when I separate them out nearer the end of the year!

July 18, 2011

Last night I doodled a black and white doodle... just for a change-up. 

July 17, 2011

    For today's sketching activity I finished the drawing of my daughter's leopard gecko Joey. Joey is a female, and she had toe damage when my daughter got her from someone who felt they could no longer keep her. Very recently she mysteriously lost most of her tail. We have come to suspect she was attacked by her much smaller and always (before) meek female cage mate. She has healed up nicely and has a soft, smooth, plump little tail. Both geckos are now happy hermits, living in solitary confinement.

July 16, 2011

    Today we visited my parents, so I had to squeeze in a sketch while at their house. This is of my father reading one of the smaller sections in the newspaper. He is an amazingly active reader, which I would never have noticed if I hadn't been attempting to draw him. Within a few moments he had held the paper (refolded repeatedly) by all possible parts, had his elbow raised, lowered, rested on his leg, his forearm rested on his tummy... it boggles the mind that he can actually read when in motion so constantly. Maybe the news was unsettling?

July 15, 2011

      Sooooooo tired... I'm just not able to finish this sketch tonight, so the "thus far" portion of this one is my posting, and counts as a sketch for today - 'cause I say so!

July 14, 2011

    Another innocent victim of intrusive sketching - snared while attempting to practice computer yoga in privacy...

July 13, 2011

     Since we arrived home late yesterday, I was unpacking today... but with several disruptions I didn't finish and haven't yet found where I packed away my pencils. Fatigued, pencilless and down to my last (crumpled) sheet of paper, I opted for a simple drawing of two figurines done with a Sharpie. The fish is ceramic and the bird is on a perfume bottle. Yaaaawn... g'night!

July 12, 2011

       This is a nickel doorknob and lock. You flip the far side of the bottom thing up to make it locked. I was sitting to the right of the doorknob to draw it, and given the movements, realized the smear to the far right of it is my reflection.

July 11, 2011

     These two crane figurines (and assorted chunks of coral and shells) are in a corner china cabinet. At first I intended to do a simple contour drawing since today is busy with closing up and packing to head north tomorrow. China figurines are a good thing to do in contour as they have clear delineated edges and can't get too complicated or they would be too fragile. 
      I kept being drawn to the knot between the cranes on the back wall of the china cabinet, and to the space behind the cranes, so I put the knot in almost without thinking, and then realized that although I surely Could put in a background and leave the cranes in contour, I would probably rather fill the cranes with a little worked surface. I think that part of what I liked about the cabinet space was the tiny, safe aspect as well as the contrast of cranes as a subject matter with the boxed space. 

July 10, 2011

      I started this sketch of a boot with a different type of colored pencils - drier and less heavily pigmented - just to try the other pencils. I didn't like the initial outline much (the body of the foot is a bit long in the arch) but I'm running out of paper so I just flipped the page and started over with a close-up of just the toe, but decided against that and went ahead with simply finishing this one, adding in some black pen too... so the over-all shape still has the overly long thing going on, and you can just make out the ghost image of the second start through the page. 
      One of the reasons I was interested in drawing the boot was because of the combination of the distressed leather, the steel on the hooks and pull, and the copper plate held on by brass round-headed screws. My colors available here are limited and it was a challenge to approximate copper. 
      My husband cut the copper plate and put it on, so the shape is just a bit irregular and the whole hand retro-fitted look is much more appealing. He thinks I should tell on myself that he added the copper plate after I brushed my boot on his tail pipe. Apparently it took a half an hour to remove the scorch mark... and then I got this cool copper plate! (I really can't see how I could possibly have touched the blasted thing except just as you find the pegs if you have to get back on while it's still hot...). There, I confessed (but I like my boot bling so I'm Not Sorry)!    

July 9, 2011

    I finished up the cherry tomatoes, worked a bit more on the blending, highlights and shadows on the other tomatoes, and am going to call it a day's sketching. It took up a decent amount of time, consisted of a decent amount of artistic exercise, and could have been simply two color drawings of tomatoes if I'd done them on seperate sheets of paper. That's the rationalization at any rate! 
    I used Prismacolor colored pencils and one 7B graphite since I had to work the shadows in very closely to the colors, and I have a hard time getting a really sharp point on Prismacolors... although I like everything else about them. I do think they are not 100% consistent in hardness though; for instance, it seems like it is easier to lay highlights onto a well-burnished surface with some very pale creams etc. than with their white, which seems a bit harder.

July 8, 2011

      Color... at least some colors... mainly tomato colors. I decided not to finish the little cherry tomatoes today when it started to look like rain. It's not important to have them be exactly the same bunch of cherry tomatoes since they all seem to grow in bunches with about the same configuration and I can move any bunch about to get the same angle on each one. 
      The squirrels have been seen carrying whole (though not the largest) tomatoes up into the trees. As I sat on the bench drawing this, I heard the scrabble of tiny toe nails behind me and when I turned there was a young squirrel just out of reaching distance - but surprisingly close - on the trunk of a tree. Did he/she really think it could steal the tomatoes from me? I made a point of placing several tomatoes with bad spots at the base of the tree later as an apology for being stingy with these...

July 7, 2011

       Here's a black pen drawing of a ten foot dingy beached and waiting for the wind to pick up and someone to take her out for a sail.

July 6, 2011

      The river went down some... not quite as much as yesterday, but I was done with the lower section anyway so that was alright. I dragged my plastic chair out and finished up the tangle of vegetation, the far shoreline and the sky, tweeked the water and that's it! 
      As for the sky, I added the faintest bit of white water color just along the edge of the clouds, which were particularly challenging with just graphite because they were dictated by where the water had dampened the paper and something (my arm?) had crumpled the corner.
      Right next to where I had my seat, someone had written in a large square cement slab (probably from the foundation of an old barn that had been near this location):  "July 25, 1927" so perhaps that's when it was built. 

July 5, 2011

        Today I planned on doing something in color... but then I discovered that the Pamlico river water was the lowest it has been since I got here, and I could actually take a chair down onto the river beach and sit to draw... an opportunity not to be missed! I may finish this tomorrow (the river willing), but today I drew until the water was sloshing up on my shins and a few more vigorous drops were reaching the paper. 
      The upper right of the drawing should be filled in with vegetation - mainly Virginia creeper and trumpet vine slinging between branches of cypress, yaupon and china berry tree, with Spanish moss draped like tinsel on vine and branch. 
      I'm told the river is wind-driven to rise and fall, although sometimes the water does taste (but not on purpose) a tiny bit brackish. The beach is swept clean by the movement and there is seldom much garbage or glass - and I usually pick up what does show up, as a sort of use-of-beauty fee.
      In this view, I'm facing up river along one of the many scallops that form where the beach has been left natural as opposed to having dropped rock or built a break-wall. The cypress and their knees hold the sand and form points and the river scoops it away in sweeps between the big trees. 
      The floats mark crab pots. The tires were dropped back when people thought it was a good idea (it's not) to hold the sand against erosion. Behind the front cypress there are two huge iron (I suppose) wheels, one fairly intact and with two broken spokes. They may have been for a wagon, but they are very old since the cypress seems to have grown into them a bit. The spot could not have been purposefully composed to be any more picturesque... 

July 4th, 2011

    I borrowed a couple of fireworks from a box my son has, and drew them for the fourth of July, and posted them when I got back from watching fireworks up the river... a display put on by the small local town. 
    It was really nice; we tied up between some craggy old dead cypress stumps and listened to the bands set up along the waterfront play patriotic songs, old rock songs and rock-a-billy. It was lit up like a carnival and the different colors dancing on the water were their own kind of fireworks. A half dozen little brown bats came and swooped erratically over the boat, but there was a light breeze and no insects bothered us. The temperature seemed to be exactly body temperature, so if it hadn't been for the breeze you might have had a hard time delineating your skin if you were dozy... but the families and friends on the boats around us were partying just enough to keep it lively out on the water, too. 
    The fireworks were gorgeous and varied; some like Queen Anne's lace, some like a swarm of giant befuddled electric bees looking for the flower that had just disappeared... there were parasols, blow-up balls, and a star and happy face or two... 
    This morning I added the two matches on top of the large firework, which needed a little livening up, and fixed the bottom left corner of that one. By the way:  That's not really the name of that one, but I didn't want to be drawing - essentially - an ad-type thing, so... just a little humor.

July 3, 2011

    This is one stem of the black bamboo growing in the side yard by the river.

July 2, 2011

    I spent my available sketch time today painting on a portrait. I should be able to post it as my sketch a day (especially since I am doing the face portion a la grisaille which ties in with sketching in a black and white and grey sort of way, don't you think?), but I have decided against posting it in all of the in-between stages since the subject peeks at this blog! That means I'm only going to post this tiny section, which I think keeps within both the spirit and the letter of sketch a dayness, but without revealing too much of the portrait plan too soon... 
    This is oil paint, by the way, thinned a bit with linseed oil, and is shining because it is still wet and I took the photo this evening (so with flash) and very close rather than mess with cropping. I'll still be able to work this tomorrow morning.

July 1, 2011

    One of the china cabinets has some shells in it, including this one. I believe it was either found on the NC coastline or in the Virgin Islands.

July 30, 2011

    Today I worked a bit on a painting I'd started earlier, but not something I've posted previously so I didn't feel like posting my progress at this time. That means I still needed something - but felt I could make it something very quick - to count as my daily sketch, so I put down the constellations that should be visible in the July night sky, connected them with faint pencil lines, and used a pen to make up a new constellation:  A cook tossing pots, pans and utensils around in the air. I think most people who recognize a few of the constellations imagine completely new and different constellations up there... it's kind of like seeing things in clouds.