Feb. 27, 2011

     Today was a beautiful day, and I was lucky to be invited to join a birding group walking about on Merrimac Farm Wildlife Conservation Center. I had never been there before, so it was new as well as lovely. This old house was standing in the woods, and I did the sketch later, from a photo. I wonder if there are owls in the rafters?

Feb 26, 2011

    A very quick sketch (posted after an Early bird walk with new friends) of crocuses, dead leaves, a tiny money plant just getting started (oddly they seem to start with tiny leaves that grow larger or the plant grows larger leaves as the season advances... either way, an odd growth habit) and perhaps that's a day lily coming up in the back...

Feb. 25th, 2011

     Here are some views of a squirrel climbing onto a feeder at my kitchen window and eating seeds and corn. The fascinating thing about squirrel tails is that they look so solid from a distance but are so thin - long hair on a little rat tail - up close. Like clouds. I couldn't manage the hands from memory, but they look like little gray tarantula legs... and yet are really adorable.

Feb. 24, 2011

    Here's a cast iron frying pan full of popcorn. One of my weakest weaknesses in drawing is producing a truly round round. Here, my pan bulges to the upper left of the handle, which is set a hair to the side from where it should be set. There are probably other problems but that's what I see right off... I will continue to try to improve on cylinders over the year since they are a challenge to me for some reason...

Feb 23, 2011

    Beaver lodge at Julie Metz wetland park, done in pen.

Feb 22, 2011

    Our younger dog Mindy done in pen. She looks like a hound from the side and a boxer from straight ahead; she's a Mountain Cur. 
She should bite me for this one...

Feb. 21, 2011

     I used black pen in order to do a very quick drawing of a parrot figurine. Tonight was unusually busy so I needed to do a fast drawing - and a simple, easy, relaxing one - so I turned to a black pen that would encourage me to Stay simple. I think I'll add this pen to my "desert island" drawing pack; it has a nice feel.

Feb. 20th, 2011

    Here is one sweet gum seed pod (commonly called "monkey balls" because they hang by their "tails"), one cone of an unknown evergreen type and one "Miss Hickory" nut. Frankly, I added the nut just to place a third thing in the sketch... it was less interesting visually and I spent less effort on it so perhaps I should/could have left it out. 

Feb 19th, 2011

    A very quick sketch tonight - an empty milk bottle.

Feb. 18th, 2011

    This is a root my son dug out of the back yard today. It probably had belonged to a sumac I'd cut down a year or two ago when it first began shading out my only sunny spot. The knob to the left would likely have become another trunk. He also dug up a mulberry root which was fabulous, but it's allure was mainly in the color; a wonderful bright orange with vivid violet stripes!

Feb. 17th, 2011

       My mother fixes her spaghetti with sausage instead of ground meat, and I tend to like it that way... here was dinner under construction last night. Someone dripped something (like water... or dog drool?) on the paper over the left-hand sausage which had to dry before I could scan it... you can still see the buckled place. Considering the time that goes into the sketches I have begun to think I should go out and purchase a heavier weight of paper so things like this would not ruin the sketch.

Feb. 16th, 2011

    This is a chess set made of malachite and some sort of white stone. Between trying to depict marbled three-dimensional pieces on a flat marbled background, with shadows, this drawing was well on the way to being another one of those rather miserable "what the heck was I thinking!?", and "what have I gotten myself into?!" sketches when "it" (seemingly independent of me!) started "working out" more nicely and I could just relax and enjoy playing with the wild stone patterns. Once I hit that point, it was pure Fun!
      I have a painting where I simply played with the foam on the waves and it was much the same kind of thing; abstract pattern play within a work of realism, and I enjoyed it immensely! In fact, I think I will post it here for the time being to show what I mean, although it isn't a Sketch A Day! Where it is currently posted, it cannot be blown up, and I wanted to show the silly, goofy, playful detail. I can always replace it with a link when that web site allows a bit more magnification, so please forgive my departure from the Sketching post! 

     Move in and look at the white foam and you'll see I just had a grand old time playing with the wiggles! Hopefully I'll find more opportunities in the future to play while I work...

Feb. 15th, 2011

    I'm finally caught up to posting one sketch a day on the day I do it... hopefully I can keep that up now although some days that will mean a very quick sketch just to maintain the momentum. I have gotten in the habit of procrastinating and doing my sketch late at night before going to bed, which means I'm tired, rushed, and unappreciative of all the "fun" I'm having (!) so I'm going to try to get a sketch done during the day somehow. 
    Of course, time is the problem, but time is almost always the problem with most endeavors, and the Sketch A Day effort is at least partially intended to elevate the importance of sketching and boost the probability of actually doing it. So far, it has accomplished that goal for me; I am, at least, sketching. 
    Obviously I feel I need to work on the mechanics of my timing and finding a place to work would help; these bulbs might look better is Someone hadn't moved them between when I started, dashed off to aid with something trivial, returned and Arrgh! the shadows and overlapping points were all different! Fudge, fudge... Maybe some of the lessons I'll be learning in drawing will be about fudging when necessary?

Feb. 14, 2011

                                  Happy Valentine's Day!  

    Shrimp... gotta love it broiled or boiled.

Feb. 13, 2011

     Peanuts. Yawn. . . g'night.

Feb. 12, 2011

     These are some views of a blue, white and peach crab claw my son picked up on a walk near a marsh off the Potomac river yesterday. The claw itself has been cleaned very well by weather and tiny "critters" so it has no smell, and has a wonderful, porcelain-like feel.

Feb. 11, 2011

    Just a playful drawing tonight... one I thought of doing after the first rabbit drawing in honor of the Chinese new year of the Golden Rabbit. Here, the peacock draws the sun (his co-symbol), which also serves as his tail up from behind the horizon to begin the day while the rabbit draws the moon (her co-symbol), which also serves as her tail down into the rabbit hole of night. The whole composes a yin-yang symbol.

Feb. 10, 2011

    Work boots, ankles crossed, up on the table. Oh well...

Feb. 9, 2011

     I wanted to do a very quick sketch tonight since I was tired and it had gotten late. Looking around for inspiration, I remembered I had run into something saying this was the Chinese zodiac Year of the Rabbit... some places say "golden rabbit"... and that it began only a few days ago on February 3rd. This might be a subject for a more fanciful drawing later since it goes on to say the rabbit represents the moon, the peacock the sun, and the two compose yin and yang.

Feb 8, 2011

    Seven parsnips in a bowl. I notice I dated this incorrectly on the sketch pad - probably carried away by the parsnip count! This one was challenging and interesting to do because I had to distinguish, without the aid of color, between shadows on the parsnips, some pigmentation on the generally cream colored vegetable, and where the parsnip is under as opposed to out of the clear water. Using a hit of white (paint or pastel or whatever) might have helped, but so far I have used a standard "no. 2" pencil almost exclusively... a self-restriction to force learning... like language immersion.
    I have not done today's sketch yet. I'll do it and add it this evening and then I will be caught up! Woohoo!

Feb. 7, 2011

    This is the part of my back yard visible from my kitchen window. The box is for squirrels, the can held compost, but the lid mysteriously won't stay on, and it's February but the tree with the chimes is a cedar. The picnic table is a very sturdy home built version, and it is not really crooked... another thing to go back into the pad and tweak (maybe, if I feel inspired to do so).

Feb 6, 2011

     Two sets of paired socks. I guess you can tell what I'd been doing that evening!

Feb. 5, 2011

    Dracunculus vulgaris in a pot in a bag waiting to be dug up and wrapped for the rest of the winter. 

Feb 4, 2011

    This is one of those plump sand dollars they call sand biscuits. I'm very un-fond of this sketch, but wasted time on it, so here it is! Despite a few problem areas, my main complaint is that it doesn't sit well on the ground. Part of the problem there is probably that I had it sitting on the slightly curved, slightly cushioned arm of an upholstered couch (I was rushed after a rather rotten day) but still... if I don't have the foresight to set up a subject so it's going to be easier to draw it believably, then I should manage to draw it believably as is...

Feb 3, 2011

    I felt like having a "fun day" with the sketching, and Opie's sketch based on a scribble had reminded me of a car game we had played as kids. I scribbled this scribble without looking (in the original game, you could look, but this game was being played with myself), then rotated it until I chose a direction. I chose this one, then I tried to draw anything I could imagine based on the scribble. The rules say you can emphasize any existing line, but cannot erase or eliminate any lines. If there's an inconvenient line, you live with it...

     This is a Wynken, Blynken and Nod sketch. I darkened some of the lines, and if I had been clearer in my mind about the rear of the boat I probably could have made that a little less confusing, but I thought of putting wind sock fish in after some debate about what to do with that particular section of the scribble which didn't do anything for me... given the sky sailing aspect of the poem, I liked the idea and can live with the slightly confused way they are attached... after all, it's also all about a dream world and we know how loosely dream worlds deal with the details!

Feb 2, 2001

    This is a red plastic vegetable brush my sister gave me. He's sitting on my kitchen window sill, and I've used him a time or two, but since it seems like it messes up his hair he's often spared.

Feb 1, 2011

    Bananas... since I don't have anything else to say about bananas, I decided to comment on my "desert island" list of sketching tools. Having been sketching so much lately, I've found the minimum and simplest things I need are a number two school house yellow pencil, a folded paper towel (because my hands are terrible smudgers and I have to have it under my hand), a clean eraser (the one I like best so far is a pentel "clic" eraser that works like a mechanical pencil to feed out a column of eraser), a big fat soft round paint brush (also because my hands are terrible smudgers... I simply cannot brush off eraser crumbs without creating a mess of my graphite)... and a sharpener. That's it. Five things, not counting the "dirty" eraser on the other end of the pencil which is sometimes good for deliberately smeary erasing. 
    Of course, I could skip the paper towel and brush, and even the eraser... but I need them to try to do "a good job". I also sometimes have been using a pencil or two out of a six pencil Staedtler HB to 8B set, but generally don't bother to break any of them out, so I could easily leave them behind without regret. 
    I haven't really got a good portable sharpener yet... I'd like a cordless electric one but am using a plug-in electric. Of course, on the desert island I'd probably need a little hand-twisted sharpener, but I'd also probably keep messing up for lack of a good point because I get drawing and admit I just won't break to sharpen if it takes too long... at least I know my foibles. 

Jan. 30, 2011

    This is a sketch of the centerpiece from a wedding my daughter and I attended. My daughter, one of the bridesmaids, brought this centerpiece home. I think this is a cyclamen; one of the few types of flowers I have never tried to grow... I drew the petals as I saw them, but I found their form to be excessively confusing; clasping and curled back downward upon themselves. Good practice, I suppose!

Jan 29, 2011

    This is my daughter working at her laptop. She was busy-busy and her hands kept flying, so I ended up just playing with that... the idea of getting them on the computer is to Not disturb them, but seize the advantage of having a person "tied to a chair" with their own business. 
    I should have brought the upper arm line forward to shorten the forearm, but didn't, out of not-being-bothered-by-then. Perhaps I will correct this in the sketch book. I have slightly exaggerated the neck, but I like the look... and she does have a long thin neck and wonderful posture, so I wouldn't change that.
 

Jan. 28, 2011

    This sketch is of the front window, curtain and plants that live there.

Jan. 27, 2011

    Awkward pie... the light cantaloupe colored pumpkin from a previous post became a pumpkin pie which we enjoyed for breakfast (yes!) and I took time out to sketch my "seconds". Really, the pie was much better than the sketch.

Jan. 26, 2011

    This is a scene from the Julie Metz Wetlands Bank park on the road out to Leesylvania state park. This is a favorite dog walk park for us, and we often see wonderful water birds here. There is also a classic beaver lodge just off shore in this marsh. 
     I didn't notice when sketching that I was going to end up putting the central mound of reeds quite So central... I suppose for composition's sake I should have moved it to the side some. I also notice that on this image (which I took with a scanner), some of the lightest pencil marks - indicating the prior movements of the frozen water - do not show up. There actually is some pencil work going on in the lower left and right quadrants.

Jan 25, 2011

    Here are some sketches done in different styles - whatever hit me at the moment - of various family members. When I was growing up, my mother (who taught art in public school) always told me to look at a drawing in the mirror so I could see it as others saw it... so it would cease to look familiar and I could better see the flaws. I have discovered that photographing or scanning these sketches and then seeing them on this blog takes them Way away from me, and I can better determine not just That "there is something wrong with (the jaw, the nose...)" but What is wrong and how to fix it... If I were going to go back into any given sketch and correct it, that would certainly be one tool to use.

Jan 24, 2011

    This is a sketch of my son's baby turtle, which has no name as yet. This little guy or gal (too early to tell) is about three months old. With this sketch, it is helpful to click on it to enlarge the image since the face shows up better when closer to the original sketch size.
    This was done from a photo, taken mid-yawn. In general, I find that when I sketch from a photo I don't have the same feeling of accomplishment. It is as though I feel like the image already exists, so why attempt to capture it? This time, I enjoyed working with sharper and fuzzier edges, and obviously I would have had a hard time with the subject without some means of artificially capturing the moment. Of course, whether or not the image already exists, there is still the element of practice, practice, practice...

Jan 23, 2011

     Here's a drawing of my sewing machine, weighed down by material and folded garments needing attention.