Quick sketching

Another week has gone by with no art in it. I don't like it when my week is so stressful that I'm either too busy or too tired to paint. So today, when I went to the hair salon, I took along my sketchbook, inspired by artist Don Low, who has lately been posting some great quick contour line drawings of random people, done at (of all places) the library. (I should take a break at work and try that...but I'm afraid our regulars would accuse me of stalking them.)

I find people challenging to draw--I'm not great with their proportions (the heads nearly always turn out oversize), and they move around a lot! But I did my best, and here's my five-minute sketch from Ooh La La! hair salon today. (I watercolored from memory when I got home.)

Oh, and BLONDE has been restored, which always makes me feel better/more myself!

EDiJ Today

I'm really liking the Beatles song prompts, and it's reminding me what geniuses they were and how much I loved some of these songs when I heard them. Tomorrow's is "The Fool on the Hill." Did you know that the Beatles as a group never actually performed this song live (although it was on the Magical Mystery Tour album), and that Sergio Mendes and Brasil 66 had the hit with it? I didn't remember that at all until I went to YouTube and listened to both versions. I remember the hit, but much prefer McCartney's take on it.

I wasn't going to paint today, but at the end of the day I found I needed to focus on something besides the devastating homophobic attack in Orlando, so I looked for a reference photo and put the song into a picture. Given what's happening in the world, I'm thinking he's not such a fool. I wish I was up on that hill right now. All by myself, with my head in a cloud, watching the world spinning round.

Catching up on June

I had done exactly two of this month's drawings until today, so I decided to catch up. Fortunately, Giselle (the moderator for EDiJ) was smart and gave us two options each day for a prompt--either a random one somebody made up, or the title of a Beatles song. So far the songs are the more appealing to me, but I'm going back and forth a little. Here are the four sketches I did today:

HERE COMES THE SUN

from a photo I took of sunrise from my back yard;

BLACKBIRD

from a photo someone posted on Facebook (it was more elaborate, but I just painted the bird);

GREEN

A green door I liked, from a photo I took a few years ago while in France (I think it's Parthenay);

and...

THE LONG AND WINDING ROAD

from a photo of Tuscany I found on the internet.

I'm going to try harder to keep up for the rest of the month...