Before and after

From Brenda Swenson's Sketch Journaling workshop, three weekends ago...

In my previous post with the kitty and the Eiffel Tower, I had been hasty to paint, so on Saturday morning when everyone else was just starting their painting, I was already done. I decided to get out my second set of personal items and draw those, hoping to have time to paint them as well before everyone else was finished.

I sometimes tend to be lazy when it comes to drawing--often just putting down the bare minimum pencil line and going straight to paints--but since Brenda makes us do contour-line in pen, that's not an option, and after the easy sketch of the Giant Cat, I decided to take on a challenge by selecting some VERY complicated jewelry. It was a major test of both patience and observation, and I barely finished the drawing by the time everyone else was done with their painting.

Here is the drawing, with pencil lines indicating where the shadows will be. (We are working in a room with fluorescent lighting, which isn't great for contrast, so we have been taking our objects outside into the sun and turning them round and round to get the best shadow pattern to unite the objects in the painting into a true grouping.) The matching bracelet and earrings and this compact belonged to my mom. You can see the writing that goes with it below, in the completed sketch journal painting.

I finally had time to paint this, three weeks later. Capturing the shine of the pearlescent central stones and the glitter of the rhinestones set in silver was virtually impossible with watercolor (or at least at my level of expertise), but I did capture the colors--I love that ice blue. These took me back to when people still dressed up to go out to dinner, and children were left at home with the babysitter (in my case, Mrs. Rosenberg and her favorite, the Lawrence Welk Show), but it was still fun to live vicariously by watching my mom put on her powder and paint, her stockings and heels, her full-skirted dresses, and the perfect jewelry to complement her outfit. In my eyes, she was the epitome of glamour.

Here we are when I was about 3 years old. Mom would have been 33, Dad 35.

And here they are at about 40 and 42. Doesn't Dad's shirt look like a Charlie Sheen special?