Every Day in January

There is an "Every Day in January" page on Facebook, providing prompts for people to sketch/paint. I wasn't sure I should commit to one of these again, because I'm wanting to spend more time on paintings as opposed to sketchbook entries. But...they have chosen a theme of "odd turns of phrase," or odd/silly sayings, and being a person who is fixated on all aspects of the English language, I couldn't resist. Also, practice is practice!

For their first prompt, they gave "Birds of a feather flock together," and since my cousin and I were just talking a few days ago at the movie theater about the "birds on a wire" theory going against the new practice of pre-reserving your seats (i.e., the whole theater is empty but you just happened to reserve seats right next to the other five people attending), I thought this one would be fun!

I tried to find an online reference for this theory, and couldn't track it down, but it's basically that birds and people will spread out to take up the maximum amount of space, only getting closer to one another as the available space dwindles. So for instance, if you're alone in a theater, it would make you really uncomfortable if someone came in and sat down right next to you, while if the theater is full, the only available empty seat being the one next to you, you wouldn't be uncomfortable at all if someone took that seat.

The prompt for day two was "It makes your hair stand on end," and although the reference is from Hamlet:

"I could a tale unfold, whose lightest word would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood, make thy two eyes, like stars, start from their spheres, thy knotted and combined locks to part and each particular hair to stand an end, like quills upon the fretful porpentine."

…and I was tempted by that "porpentine," I decided to stick with "The Birds" theme. Also, there's a book called Alfred Hitchcock's Tales to Make Your Hair Stand On End, so how could I not? Here, therefore, is The Master of Suspense:

Didn't quite capture the true breadth and poutiness of his face, but I think it looks like him. Or maybe like Lyndon B. Johnson?

These are both drawn with a LePen #0.3, in my recently started 9x9 Bee Super Deluxe (93 lb. ) sketchbook. And for Alfred, I painted exclusively with my new favorite color, Daniel Smith Shadow Violet. (I mixed in some Payne's Gray to get the darkness on the coat, but otherwise it's all the one paint/color.) I love how it granulates, and shows traces of purples and turquoises.

More tomorrow, while I'm still off from work, and then we'll see…