November 26, 2011

     This is a Boyt leather holster made in 1942 for a 1911 model 45 made in 1919 - the kind of gun that my father carried in China in World War II.

November 25, 2011

    This finally looks like this fellow to me, although I see some problems. It would just go down hill from here if I kept working on it though, so here is where I "get off"!

November 24, 2011

    I have more work to do on this... around the eyes, on the mouth, all over - but I'm posting now since it's enough for one day and I'm behind so I'm catching up, catching up!

November 23, 2011

    Here's a drawing of a belt... probably from the army surplus store. Throughout my childhood we used these along with the metal, canvas-jacketed canteens to carry water on hikes. 
    The odd dark stripe is the edge of the surface it's on. It doesn't carry the idea well at all. I shouldn't have included it, except the shadow fell off the edge and looked odd to me when I extended it so I put in the edge, and now That looks odd... pay no attention to the thick dark line...

November 22, 2011

    I have spent a few days away... so I picked up this stone (barely indicated to the lower left) intending to draw It late at night, but then moved on to drawing the plant (perhaps related to an aloe) on the bedside stand.

November 21, 2011

    Just a little bit more on the quilt...

November 20, 2011

    This strange drawing is of a corner of an all-white quilt which was folded up next to me this evening. It may not look like it, but this one took quite some time, and I'm going to work on it in stages.

November 19, 2011

      I've been soooo busy I'm getting behind on my drawing and posting so I have to ketchup! What's that - do I hear distant groans?

November 18, 2011

    Having watched a demo recently of watercolor done in a series of washes I wanted to give the pale layering a try... so I made a sketch of a man from a photo. I am probably going to have to pull the left hand eye out a bit tomorrow before trying the washes. 
    I rather doubt the paper will to stand up to the water creditably; since I don't do watercolor I don't keep the correct paper around. I don't want to run out to get heavier watercolor paper just to satisfy a bit of curiosity, but if it seems interesting (or frustrating?) enough I may have to...

November 17, 2011

    This is a drawing of a jar of olives. The top gave me trouble, and since I made the mistake of going in dark with it from the beginning (what was I thinking? this is my nemesis the cylindrical shape!) the erasures show...

November 16, 2011

    These are gel caps - four fish oil pills.

November 15, 2011

    This is a drawing of a tea bag while it's still dry.

November 14, 2011

    This is a drawing of a single parsnip on a ribbed towel. It's another Farmers' Market purchase.

November 13, 2011

    A quick line drawing of a kholrabi from the Farmers' Market will do for tonight. I wasn't sure what this odd purple thing was, although I see them around, so I had to look it up in image search once I got it home. 
    Someone was asking why I picked out a vegetable I had no clue about... and the answer is that I wanted to draw it, of course! Still, we are always willing to try eating a new vegetable. Some are better than others - my sons suffer for my art!

November 12, 2011

    Today we had the opportunity to admire some particularly large and lovely trees, so it put me in the mood to draw a tree... but it was dark by the time I got to it, so I decided to reference a photo. I found one I took on the walk between the metro and my sister's house. I'm not sure of the type (no leaves), but it had striking black and white bark. Hmmm... pen and ink, then. It needed something... a person reading at the base, of course.

November 11, 2011

    A drawing of a dried rose for Veterans' Day.

November 10, 2011

    Okay... I'm not really skipping a day in there; I flipped the dates so I could pretend I had the birthday cake on the real, correct, actual birthday! Shenanigans...
    This is an antique bottle opener with a handle made out of polished horn. During this period they also made quite a few things out of imitation horn, imitation ivory and so on. Many of those things are actually pretty cool too!

November 8, 2011

    What would be an appropriate birthday cake for an artist? A Tall birthday cake, of course! Here it is... Happy Birthday Amy!

November 9, 2011

    Here's the drawing of the candelabra bulb with a strong light on it. I enjoyed doing this drawing, but find the shorter shadow odd-looking and somewhat confusing. 
    In this case, the actual drawing looks better than the scan shown. I many cases, I like the scan better. Since they are supposed to be identical (except for the slight shadow that sometimes creeps in where the sketch pad tends to bend up away from the scanner bed near the spiral back), I'm not sure why they so often strike me as almost imperceptibly different, yet with a difference where I have a decided preference. Someday I will figure that out...

November 7, 2011

     Normally, when I take two days to work on a drawing, I have genuinely spent a healthy portion of time on the first day before I quit... so this is sort of cheat-y because I didn't really spend much time at all on this! I'm posting it so I don't get another day behind. I'm going to go to sleep and finish tomorrow. I guess this was a half-day holiday of sorts!

November 6, 2011

    We used to have a parakeet, and that little guy was a regular feather factory. I would pick out the prettier, cleaner feathers and put them into a clear baggie. This is a drawing of a section of the baggie.

November 5, 2011

    Since I have gotten a few days behind, I ended up doing two drawings today - the texture patch tree below and this simple drawing of a tiny purple wildflower from our dog walk. The little purple flowers are only about one cm long. Sometimes the tiniest flowers have surprisingly complex structures and even elaborate markings.

November 4, 2011

    For quite some time, I have been intending to make a sampler of textures... to try out some combinations of stippling, cross-hatching, smudging, sharp point or flat of the graphite "lead" and so on which I wasn't always finding opportunities to play with in drawing specific objects. 
    Here, I did that - and then just to pull it all together and give a nod to the patchwork of Autumn tree colors out there (even though in black and white), I made the sampler patch into a stick tree, complete with falling texture-patch leaves.

November 3, 2011

    This is a geode. It has been sliced open to show the interior; a hollow space with walls of sand-fine crystals. The sliced surface is glass-smooth with a layer of air bubbles, and the exterior is rough, finely pocked, and veined with puffy white strands that resemble "silly string" of stone.

November 2, 2011

    Well, tonight's drawing produced one of my "stinky fish". Too many people kept crowding into my space, annoying each other and me, the phone kept ringing, people arrived, despite saying "don't move those carrots" they got moved. And again. I got impatient (Knowing there wasn't a chance I'd find any "zone" tonight), and just scribbled... I even lost track of which carrot was where and scribbled the shading on the paper all wrong and had to go back in and just outline them sharply! Frankly, I was just getting it done. I suppose there will be nights like that...

November 1, 2011

    "The time has come," the Walrus said, 
"To talk of many things:
Of shoes - and ships - and sealing wax - 
Of cabbages - and kings - " - Lewis Carroll
     I'm sure you can see the cabbage, but can you see the king?

October 31, 2011

    My eyes really really want to close now, so I'm posting the first part of this drawing of a purple cabbage and going to sleep! G'night and sweet dreams.

October 30, 2011

    I suppose I'm still in the Halloween spirit, but this little gal really was a Halloween surprise! I had moved some plants inside to save them from a freeze, and perhaps she came from one of those, or perhaps she had gotten on me somehow when I moved some empty pots around by the front door in preparation for little trick or treaters, but at any rate when I came inside and carried a bowl of candy to the front door, I leaned over to set it down and suddenly there she was! 
    She ran scramble-zip across the table top toward the bowl. Now would you expect a spider to go for candy? I threw all of the candy on the floor except one package I used as a tool to scoop her into the bowl and keep her corralled down at the bottom until I found a small jar and got some rubbing alcohol into it - then plop. Poor lady - pickled. 
    Today I got her out and stretched her out onto a paper to draw. As you might expect, she's really rather lovely; sort of a velvety glossy black. She had a light red bit on her back and a rather under-developed hour-glass on her underside, but I know my widows and this is one. 
    We have had a bit of a population boom in widows in the yard this past summer, in fact. Most have been more decorative; with full blood red hour-glasses and red, yellow and white markings on their backs (Northern Black Widows). My "favorite" ones have white markings just like the ribs of a skeleton on their backs... so appropriate! In this case "favorite" is still something I'd gladly do without!

October 29, 2011

    And so I've finished the drawing of squash in a bowl... minus the bowl. Squash and a few apples on the bottom, actually.

October 28, 2011

    Here's a trick-or-treating skeleton in a pumpkin costume. He's holding his foot, of course, because he's saying "Trick or treat! Smell my feet! Give me something good to eat!"