December 15, 2011

    I rarely watch any television but there was a nature show on which I wanted to see, so to try to make the time count a bit more I held my pad on my lap... I did this quickly and loosely, and the head end was beyond my range of vision without twisting around uncomfortably. 

December 11, 2011

                                   Guy reading to a dog
    Okay, so I went all around the perimeter of this drawing first, working from a photo, and showed the result in my last post. As an exercise, it was fairly amusing and I really expected a pretty goofy result (well, a much goofier result at any rate ... maybe next time) because I thought I would probably be further off in more parts than it turned out I was. 
    When you work from one side to another or all over the page, you have multiple internal checks for things lining up, being at the same level, coming together at the right points or leaving a certain shape in negative space. Here, the only negative space was around the shape and under the guy's right arm. 
     Next time, maybe I'll try a more peculiar outline. Maybe next time I'll try doing a still life (or something else able to stay still long enough since this takes a little while). At any rate, it livened the routine up a bit for me!

December 10, 2011

    This is an outline of my son holding his dog on his lap. I did this from a photo (or else it would have been lots of wiggly lines and those parenthetical motion indications they use in cartoons). It is something of an exercise - related to the exercise of blind contour. It wasn't done blind at all, and not nearly as slowly and carefully as those are supposed to be done. It is, then, somewhat of a homunculous type drawing; the distortions probably reflect my perceptions of the importance of the parts. Now I'll go fill it in - if I can!

November 30, 2011

     Considering my exceptionally germy state, I stayed back from the food and did a sketch of my son fixing dinner. It's a quick sketch, but I'm a long way behind on drawings!

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 14, 2011

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

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.

April 18, 2011

     Here's an Earth Day sketch - I've used a traditional Apache cradle (which is normally laced back and forth across the baby/ papoose) as Earth's cradle with representatives of Earth's species strung on the laces as the web of life. The Apache woman is, of course, Mother Earth, and she is clothed in her continents. The continents are distorted and not at all placed in relative positions, but the planning that would involve would have added significantly to the time needed, so I've left it up to the viewer to imagine they can discern some familiar outlines...

April 5, 2011

    This was my husband reading a report in the living room. He showed signs of being ready to take a break, so I had to rush the legs.

March 16, 2011

    A boy and his dog:  Mindy ( a mountain cur ) and Scott catching up on zzzs together. Mindy's ear is inside-out, and I'd think being belly up would feel vulnerable too, but they've "got each other's back". 

March 11, 2011

     This was an exercise in drawing a moving human figure, although I cheated quite a bit by using a "vlog" (no idea why the referencing site calls it that) of a dancer so that I could play and replay the moment that caught my eye, even though she is moving extremely slowly in this passage... no pausing though!
     I used a video of Zoe Janeroncka, partly because the pose appealed to me and partly because of the dramatic lighting. I changed her hair from dark to light however, simply because it worked better for me. 
    

Jan. 20, 2011

     This is a blind contour drawing of one of my sons working on the computer with his dog, Mindy, beside him. He's sitting on an old school house bench seat. The desk top is behind him and would have served the child behind the seat when many of these were lined up in a column. 
     I had to drape a light scarf over my pad and pencil or I would have cheated! I started at the upper left arm (about the top middle) and had to look down to place my pencil seven times... twice on the scroll-work on the desk - and I'm amazed it isn't more crossed up - and twice on the dog - and I'm amazed she is so crossed over and goofy looking! I didn't look to get the numbers onto the alarm face, but they pretty much made it there...