Tuesday, December 18, 2012

Some Inspiration

I read this on the blog A Daring Adventure today and had to share, I thought it was a great quote.



I need to remind myself of the as often as possible!


Sunday, December 16, 2012

Daily Sketching – Wrapping up, very late!

So despite the yawning gap in my posting, I did end up sketching all 30 days of November. Many were just "eh" and a few were very cute and fun. All in all, I'd consider it a success. Here are the last five dats.

November 26
Another sketch in bed. Wasn't sure what to draw, but looked at my bedside lamp (which does not look like this one, BTW) and went from there. (I was sketching with the book at an angle, like when you write, and everything is cattywompus when you turn the book straight. HA!)
11-26 desk

November 27
I've been making scarves like crazy which is the inspiration for this. See, she even looks a bit crazy. Seriously, NOT my best attempt at a face...
11-27 cold weather

November 28
Very end of the day, had taken a loaf of bread out of the oven a bit earlier and decided, what the hell. I'll draw the bread, and went from there...
11-28 bread


November 29
Look away! She'll get you in your sleep. AAAHHHH. Ok, maybe a bit of an exaggeration, but she is rather creepy. I attempted a more "big eyed girl" approach to a face and failed miserably. Gah.
11-29 creepy face

November 30
Throw a party - it's the last day of sketching!! Oh, and also my dad and youngest nieces' birthday.
11-30 party

Monday, November 26, 2012

Daily Sketching – Doodles and Legs

Thursday, 11/22
I was in my art room working out some creative frustration with a canvas I made a year ago. Never much liked it and started to really hate it, so I did the right thing. Scraped all the crap off and gessoed the hell out of it, slapping down some paper and copies of drawings to cover up the mess and create a base for something I'll love. Ah... so much better. ANYway, after I cleaned up my hands and was ready to head back downstairs to check on some Thanksgiving preparations, I grabbed a piece of charcoal sitting on the table and drew on the paper I keep on the table to protect it. About 60 seconds worth of furious sketching. I love charcoal.

11-22 charcoal face


Friday, 11/23
More doodling. Figured I'd do an "L" since I already did the "K."

11-23 doodle L

Saturday (bonus doodle)
11-24 doodles

Saturday & Sunday, 11/24 & 11/25

I think I mentioned before that I'm taking Jane Davenport's I Heart Drawing workshop. I fell WAY behind in the class, but am still plugging away a bit at a time. I need to work on hands and feet more, but I watched the arms and legs lessons and put them to use. I did the ballet legs on Saturday (that's a little wrap skirt on her) and then went all out and did the 50s beach girl I attempted earlier. The "skinny" version was more of a winging it attempt. This was much more deliberate. And she has legs. *wolf whistle* She's definitely more proportion than the first girl.

11-24 legs

11-25 50s swim-2

Thursday, November 22, 2012

Daily Sketching – 11-19 thru 11-21

Monday, November 19

Sitting on the couch after a long day, needing to sketch but zero inspiration. Looked around and saw two candle holders. Sure, why not. So I sketched one. Turned out pretty cute, actually. Sometimes you just have to slog through!
11-19 candle stick

Tuesday, November 20
Again, not sure what to draw, so I went to my Pinterest boards to find inspiration. Decided on a letter doodle. If you haven't tried doodling, I highly recommend it. It's a great warm up exercise and it's a really good way to let go. Let go of expectations, perfection, over-thinking. You just make marks, fill in with random shapes, have fun. It definitely helps me loosen up about drawing and just... let go.
11-20 K doodle

Wednesday, November 21
I decided to draw a face with no idea what I wanted her to look like. Turns out she was sad. Aw, poor thing. Hey, sometimes you just have to be sad.
11-21 sad girl

Sunday, November 18, 2012

Daily Sketching – 50s Bathing Beauty, the Skinny version

After sketching this lovely retro-suited beauty, I decided I need to sketch a curvier version, so you'll be seeing that soon.

I used this image from Pinterest as my inspiration.

11-17 50s swim-skinny

She is beach ready. I, however, have gotten a really good start on my winter "insulation". Oof.

Friday, November 16, 2012

Daily Sketching – Nov. 10-16

Here are my sketches from the past week...

Saturday, November 10
Dwight and I went for a walk that evening. I saw some dead grass on the side of the street and thought it was interesting. This drawing took all of 2 minutes, max. Very loose and quite fun to draw, actually. And then my cats chewed on the grass and got it covered in kitty spit. True story.
11-10 grass

Sunday, November 11
Yep.  I was eating chocolate and watching The Avengers. What?
11-11 candy avengers

Monday, November 12
I hadn't just doodled in a while, so I decided it was high time I got back to it!
11-12 heart doodle

Tuesday, November 13
This was quite interesting. I knew I wanted to draw a figure, but had no idea where I was going with it. I drew her face, body and dress and knew she needed something. So I drew the basket of tulips...and then she needed an apron and boots if she was going to be out cutting flowers... and I went from there. She really needed an entire scene, so I made one for her. So cute!
11-13 gardening

Wednesday, November 14
This was FUN (up until the end... I'll get to that)  I'm taking The Art of Wild Abandonment 2 online art course from Junelle Jacobson and Christy Tomlinson, and in the first week (which I'm STILL on, BTW) Junelle has us just draw a bunch of circles on a page. She turns them into mugs, but I loved the idea of just starting with circles and seeing where it goes. I stared at the page and started doodling. First up, the flower in the bottom/center. Then the lotus-type flower where the two circles overlapped. Then I drew circles in circles... then an eye... and acorn... a cherry... the moon...
11-14 circles
And then I took a sip of wine, choked, and spit it all over my laptop and sketchbook sitting near by. Seriously. My laptop smells like a wino. Oops.

Thursday, November 15
I worked really late. Have been putting in a lot of hours, and went to bed without having sketched. Wasn't going to let that happen! So I brought my little book with me to bed, head on my pillow, and stared at the page... what's on my mind..... RVs, that's what. There's a BIG RV show just after Thanksgiving every year and every year, my work is INSANE right about now. So I have RVs on the brain. I conjured up an old Shasta travel trailer from memory (not terribly accurate, but I got the "feel" of it), threw in a fire, chairs and some trees and thought it was darn cute!
11-15 camping

Friday, November 16 (today!)
I had a photo of a 50s inspired up-do that I thought would make a good subject and figured tonight was as good a time as ever to draw it.
11-16 retro hair

So there you have it... half way through the month already and I haven't missed a day. WOO!

Saturday, November 10, 2012

Daily Sketching – Flower Pots, Wine, Books

Catching up.

11/7 – Clay Pots (from an image on Pinterest)
11-7 clay pots

11/8 – Wine Glass (mine!)
11-8 wine glass

11/9 – Bookstore (again, an image from Pinterest)
11-9 bookstore

And this is what I usually have to deal with when I take photos of my drawings:
mal-lights
mal
gir

Tuesday, November 6, 2012

XPost - Daily Sketching & Voting!

This is a cross-post from my art blog.


So I started drawing tonight, not sure what I was going to sketch. Dinner was on the stove - sausage and cabbage - and I thought, "Why not sketch a cabbage?" 

11-6 produce

Why not, indeed. I didn't stop there. I added an onion, a bell pepper, squash and to mix it up a bit, a lemon. 


And THEN I though, "Um, Duh. Why don't you sketch something topical, like Oh I don't know, the election?!" So I did this.

11-6 vote

I voted. I hope you did, too!

Daily Sketching - Vote!

So I started drawing tonight, not sure what I was going to sketch. Dinner was on the stove - sausage and cabbage - and I thought, "Why not sketch a cabbage?"

11-6 produce

Why not, indeed. I didn't stop there. I added an onion, a bell pepper, squash and to mix it up a bit, a lemon.


And THEN I though, "Um, Duh. Why don't you sketch something topical, like Oh I don't know, the election?!" So I did this.

11-6 vote

I voted. I hope you did, too!

Monday, November 5, 2012

Daily Sketch - Bluebirds

A couple of bluebirds, sketched from a random image I found online.

11-5 bluebirds

BONUS SKETCH
Yesterday, after posting my dress sketch, I felt like drawing a bit more, and she emerged. Isn't she cute?
11-4 dancer

Sunday, November 4, 2012

Daily Sketch - Dress on Form

Hey! I'm finally putting my Pinterest pins to use! Here's today's sketch, based on a dress I pinned just today.

11-4 dress

Just a note. The sketchbook shown here is just a little 4"x6" book I can keep handy. I won't be using it for all of my daily sketching, but it's a great size to take anywhere.

Saturday, November 3, 2012

Sketching

I've decided that I'm going to do a sketch a day for November. I know some use this month to write a novel, grow facial hair, or express gratitude each day. I have only fleetingly longed to scribe a novel, have no interest in encouraging my facial hair growth (even for a good cause), and really like the idea of practicing gratitude, but I thought I'd use it to push myself into the habit of sketching daily. No grand schemes for creating a masterpiece, just whatever strikes my fancy at the time.

Since I'm getting a late start posting (but have actually sketched on each of the three days so far comprising this month), I'll post all three today.

November 1: Holding On
11-1 holding on
Just a girl I felt like drawing, flowy dress and hair, just holding on.

November 2: Red Carpet
11-2 red carpet
I drew her face and she seemed like a starlet, so I added the glamorous dress and little clutch. I love her "finger waved" hair.

November 3: Balloons!
11-3 balloons
I had an image on my fashion illustration inspiration board and finally decided to put it to use. So cute!

Sunday, October 21, 2012

Bee Butts

bee butts1

So the hummingbirds have left for the winter, but there are still critters taking advantage of the sugar water. These bees have been gorging themselves on the last of the nectar.

bee butts2
Butts in the ay-yair, like they just don't ca-yair.

sugar high
And there's some stupid bug languidly swimming INSIDE the feeder. It somehow managed to get all the way inside the drink holes and swim up into the main reservoir. Death by sugar, very slowly. Poor bastard.

Monday, October 15, 2012

Art Journal Play - Seeing Faces

Art Journal 10-15-12-painted face

In case you hadn't figured it out already, I love to draw faces. That's been true since high school. I would lose myself sketching stylized faces. I went a very long time without putting pencil (or paint) to paper but never lost the pull to draw faces.

Having immersed myself back in art over the last year and a half has reminded me of that pull. I've taken various on-line art courses that have me drawing more and more faces, specifically I Heart Drawing by Jane Davenport. Love her, LOVE this course.

I have a couple of art journals going, and in most, I have half-finished backgrounds mostly the result of slapping my leftover paint on a page as not to waste it. This is one such page. I was flipping through the book, saw this page and thought it would be fun to paint a face over the top. I wish I'd gotten a shot before I worked on the face, but you can see quite a bit of it through the face.

I'm mesmerized by her. Sure, her eyes are a bit wonky and she's rather lopsided, but I think she's darling, if I do say so myself!
Art Journal 10-15-12-painted face-detail

Sunday, September 30, 2012

Finished – Untitled (for now) Woman

untitled-face-text-all

I finished it - finally! I wrote a WIP post way back in April (!) and am happy to say she's finally finished.

Some of the WIP:
painted face-beginning
WIP-face
(where I left off on the last post-following is later in the day after fixing her nose)
face-nose fixed


I anguished over where to go from just about the point I left her in late April. I knew I wanted paper flowers either in her hair or representing her hair, but kept putting off making the decision. I was afraid of "ruining" what I'd started.

So I made paper flowers.

paper flowers

Lots of paper flowers.

And after determining that I did NOT want her whole head covered in them, came up with a pleasing arrangement, took a photo so I'd know what I'd liked...

flower placement

Then set about painting her hair. I also decided to add some stenciled, if illegible, words to the background. I just wanted to break things up a bit, add some more texture and interest, pull in more of the mixed media feel I was going for.

untitled-face-text-detail

The inspiration photo I used showed some sort of barrette in her hair, so I fashioned one for my girl out of wire and a paper flower. I also added a wire "earring" to help tie things together.

painted face-hair

untitled-face-flowers-detail

The flower "eye" is made from light modeling paste and a flower stencil. I'm very pleased with how she came out even though I got very stuck for a long time. I needed to let go of feeling like I was going to "ruin" it or make a mistake. As Donna Downey says, "Forward motion." Just keep moving forward and the right things will emerge.

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