6/30/11

Weird shell

I was looking for something in my art cabinet when I came across this shell. I don't remember having it - it's different from other shells I have. It's weird - part of it looks like a normal, spiral shell, but the other side is wildly organic. It looks like it was frozen in the act of crawling and squirming. It reminds me of the Davy Jones character in the Pirates of the Caribbean movies, with a squid for a face. It was hard to position it to show what it fully looks like, so I let the shadow tell part of the story.

6/29/11

"C" a little work on the cactus

I only had time to paint for about 20 minutes today, so I worked on the cactus. I think it's going to get a yellow flower!

6/28/11

Anvil and arrowhead

This is a little red anvil (for jewelers?) and an arrowhead which I bought on eBay a few years ago to use in my "A" painting, which I'll get to, maybe after I finish "C".

6/27/11

"C", day 7

I didn't have much time for painting today, so I just worked on the leaves of the croton plant.

6/26/11

"C", day 6

If I leave a painting for several days (or longer), I find it very hard to jump back into it. Today I did what I was threatening to do - I moved the shell to the right a bit. I still need to go in and repaint the shell, but I just did the minimum to get it moved over. I mainly worked on the cow, and adjusted the size of the cactus a tiny bit.

Here's an interesting thing you can do: open a new tab on your browser, and go to this blog. Click on the 6/19/11 post. (Have it on the 6/26/11 post in the first tab.) Click on both posts to magnify them, and toggle back and forth between the two tabs. You'll see how the painting changed between the two days.

6/25/11

Shell

Doing these little daily drawings reminds me of how much I've always loved to draw, but haven't really done much of it over the years. Being forced to sit down and do a drawing every day is great - I've given myself permission to do something that I normally would not make the time to do. I want to get back to my C painting, and finish it. Maybe tomorrow I'll be able to work on it.

6/24/11

Hinged shell

I have a lot of shells, mostly bought at shell shops at various beaches. I've had this one a long time, but always thought it was glued shut - some sort of closed clam or something. Imagine my surprise when I picked it up tonight and it opened! No pearl inside, unfortunately.

6/23/11

Wire tools

These are the tools I used to make the wire cat the other day. The wire cutters got left out recently, and one of the cats chewed the plastic off the ends of the handles. They love rubbery things.

6/22/11

My trusty little camera

I like drawing familiar things from an unfamiliar angle.

6/21/11

Wire cat with spool

This was today's lesson with my private student: we did gesture drawings of cats from a book of photographs, then picked our favorite gesture drawing and made a wire sculpture from it. This is mine.

6/20/11

Old carnations

This is kind of a half-baked effort, because I'm very tired tonight. These are the carnations, now fading, that I took out of my "C" painting. They're in a cornucopia vase.

6/19/11

"C" day 5

Today I mainly worked on the picture on the wall, which is Cezanne's painting "The Card Players". I scraped out the cactus and repainted it a little larger. I took out one of the plant's leaves that was reaching down toward the shell. I've been thinking that the shell needs to be moved a tiny bit back and to the right, but I was hoping taking that leaf out would help. It did help, but I think I might still have to move the shell. Sometimes paintings happen quickly and easily, and other times they put up a fuss. Hopefully, as I get back in practice, it will get easier, as the drawings have. Daily practice really does pay off!

6/18/11

"C", day 4

This painting is undergoing some radical changes! I was feeling bogged down, and I really didn't like it. I got rid of the cherries - they were too dark. I painted out the crayons - I thought they were kind of silly. And I threw out the flowers - they were too fluffy and cute. I went to the garden center and found a nice little cactus, and a croton plant. I changed the picture on the wall to Cezanne's "The Card Players".

It was a lot of fun today to paint over the old stuff and paint in the new. Much of the paint was dry, but some areas of the blue cloth were still wet from the other day. The trick to painting over wet areas with something completely different, as with the cactus, is to use a lot of paint, and apply it as if you're frosting a cake. I didn't really have to do that anywhere else, such as the croton, because the carnations had been pretty dry. I just scraped the area down with my palette knife to get rid of any ridges - same with the crayons. I worked on the checkered cloth some. I left the croton leaves to dry a little, so when I go into it with the bright yellow and red, which all the leaves have, the paint will sit crisply on the surface of the leaves. I'm kind of liking the way the left side of the painting is so crowded, and the right side has open spaces. I'm considering whether to put anything else on the right.

This painting is fun again. Sometimes you just have to make big changes.

6/17/11

Dusty girl

I've been in kind of an art slump the last few days. Feeling bogged down in the painting is the reason. I missed drawing yesterday - the third time this year. Tomorrow I'm planning on getting up early, getting in the studio, and fighting it out with the C painting until it yields to my will.

6/15/11

"C", day 3

Well, I didn't have to work today, and I thought I'd be able to paint all day, but... lots of interruptions, things happening, necessary errands, and as a result, I really didn't get to paint very much at all. I changed the cupcake, I repainted the blue cloth, I sketched out changes for the checkered cloth. Most importantly, Hal helped me set up the lighting in my studio so my painting is no longer in the dark. I was feeling so frustrated with the lighting, with my painting either in the dark, or having a glare from the light I had on. Hal showed me that aiming the light toward the ceiling was much better, and suddenly, I could see the colors on my painting! I also bought some new cherries, to replace the shriveling ones, which I haven't really had a chance to work on yet.

6/14/11

Shoes

I took a break from painting today, and almost forgot to do a drawing! This is a much looser rendering of my shoes, using the Sharpie fine pen in a sketchy manner.

6/13/11

"C" painting, day 2

OK, technically not a drawing, but I'm posting it here anyway. I painted a couple of hours this morning before I went to work, but I was too tired to paint after work. I'm not happy with the medium I'm using; it makes the paint dry too fast. I'll let it sit awhile to dry further, and then I'll go back into it with a different medium - maybe straight linseed oil. This still needs a lot of work - I wasn't careful enough when I painted the checks on the cloth, and I'll need to redo most of it. I'm going to buy a new cupcake - I don't like this one. The cherries need work, and if they shrivel up before I get to them, I'll just buy new ones. Hopefully on Wednesday, when I don't have to work at the library, I'll be able to fix a lot of this. (The shadow at the top is because it's on the easel.)

6/12/11

 

Photo of stll life for "C" painting

 drawing on canvas

 "C" painting, day 1

I finally got back to my alphabet series! This is "C" - everything in the painting starts with the letter C. I worked from around 1:30 until almost 8 p.m., with a few breaks. I had hoped to get all the canvas covered with the first pass, but I'm "out of shape", since I haven't done any painting (except for copying at the National Gallery) for months. So my stamina isn't what it could be - I just ran out of steam. I'll try to get to it early tomorrow before I go to work at the library, and again after I get home.

The first picture is a photo of the setup before I started the painting. Next comes the sketch on the white canvas, done freehand with a brush. Last is the painting as it stands at the end of day 1. I paint very directly, and try hard to get the colors and values as close as I can. After I cover the whole canvas, I may repaint entire areas to correct values and colors, painting wet into wet, or maybe just touching up here and there if I got it pretty right the first time.

(Please note - I included the photo at top just for comparison and informational purposes. I do all the work directly from life, not from the photo.)

6/11/11

Alex getting a haircut

I have a much easier time drawing people with a pencil rather than a pen. Alex was having trouble stopping texting long enough to get his hair cut.

6/10/11

Sabu!

Sabu posed for me - he stayed so still, and as soon as I was done, he curled up and went to sleep. (He's a black cat, you know, but I just did a contour drawing of him, so he looks white.) He's in a typical position, which we like to call "the famous Sabu paw-tuck." He's always extremely debonaire.

6/9/11

Sketch for "C"

This afternoon I worked on setting up a still life for "C" in my alphabet series. I started this series years ago, but only got "B" finished - my "A" painting eluded me, and I gave it up for awhile. Now I'm going to get back to it, but I'm skipping "A" and going straight to "C". I don't normally do a drawing first, but usually just draw it on the canvas with paint, but I needed to produce a daily drawing and so I decided to sketch this. It's probably hard to tell what's going on in this sketch, but everything in this still life starts with the letter "C". To be continued...

6/8/11

Waiting for the doctor

I spent some time at the urgent care tonight to have a tick bite looked at. Turned out not to be too serious, got some antibiotics... but of course it took forever. Good thing I brought my sketchbook.

6/7/11

Library break room snack machine

I didn't do a drawing yesterday! (only the second time all year, but still, I felt bad) I was going to do two today to make up for it, but I didn't have time, and I DID do two on Friday, so I think I'll call it even. I did this one today during my 15-minute break, not enough time to finish it, but oh well.

6/5/11

Simple machines

6/4/11

Gregory getting a haircut

I accidentally started writing the date "3/...", then I realized it's June. Where does the time go?

6/3/11

 Bulldozer

Excavator

They're widening a road about a mile from my house. It was a beautiful day, I needed a walk, I needed to do my daily drawing, so... I walked over to the construction site with my sketchbook and my Sharpie fine pen. It was the evening rush hour and cars were whizzing by on the two-lane, soon to be four-lane, road. The top drawing was done from across the road. I liked drawing the little bulldozer in profile. He looks smug at what he's accomplished. The second drawing was done further down the road, by continuing on after a sign told me the sidewalk was closed and I needed to cross here. I kept going on dry, hard-packed clay, and found a whole line of big machines. I feel very sorry for folks whose houses back up to this road; they are losing most of their back yards, and will soon have traffic speeding by right under their bedroom windows.

6/2/11

P.E.I. pebbles

This little black tray is full of small rocks picked up on Prince Edward Island, nestled into a bed of red sand that this eastern Canadian province is known for.

6/01/11

June self-portrait

The first of the month, another self-portrait - this one in colored pencil (no erasing, I got what I got.) I just got a haircut!