Every day in February, and Tea

I finally got back to sketching via Liz Steel's teacups. I decided to try a few myself, and while they don't come up to her standards, I can see the fascination with trying different things--water soluble Tombow markers, painting without drawing first...I'm sure there will be more to come.

The first one is Tombow marker, and I realized, since it was soluble, that I'd better not draw the parts that I wanted to stay true to color, so I stopped with the marker and just painted from this point on. Things still got a little muddy--should have quit five minutes before I did.

This one was going to be a drawing with a new (also water-soluble) fountain pen, but I couldn't get the pen to work. I don't know if it's old ink (who knows how long these things sit on the shelf?), if the paper is clogging the nib, or what, but I got a few strokes out and that was all she wrote, so to speak. I gave up, drew this with my faithful Micron pen, and then painted.

Yesterday I got curious about whether there was an "Every Day in February" exercise (a little late!). There is. The theme is "travelogue," and each day is a country. You can paint anything to do with that country's landscape, flora and fauna, culture, or what have you.

Today, fortuitously, was "Greece," where I have always wanted to go, so I took a painting trip to Santorini. The intricate cluster of buildings on these cliffs is daunting when you dwell on each individual nook and cranny, so instead of doing that, I tried to squint and get the basic shapes. I penciled everything in lightly, painted, and then erased most of the pencil lines. It's not entirely a success--I think I needed to go a lot darker with shadows to provide more contrast for that bright whitewash--but I think it captures the feeling of the intensity of the light on Santorini.

I doubt I'll be able to keep up with the daily paintings, but I'll drop in when one is particularly appealing to me. (Ireland is coming soon...)

Short Sketch

I've been MIA for a couple of weeks, getting some things in order. I'm working a truncated schedule for the next six weeks while I go to physical therapy and water aerobics to get me past the knee injury I sustained a couple of months ago, that has refused to heal (and in fact has gotten worse) while enduring a full-time work schedule.

You would think this would give me more time to sketch and paint, but it hasn't worked out that way. So many other things are taking precedence that I've neglected this side of things. Hopefully, that will change as I get into more of a routine. Ironically, I seem to be spending half of my time off thinking about work and making lists for what to do on the days I'm there! OCD, I'm afraid.

Anyway, we had a work event last night--a Bored Board Games night with our teens. Not too many showed up, but the ones who did had a great time playing Burbankopoly, Clue, Parcheesi, Battleship, Jenga, and Harry Potter Trivial Pursuit, as did Anarda and I! (Yes, sometimes it's the best job ever.)

I managed, while not playing something myself, to do one quick little sketch of some of the teens. I'm not great at people (especially when they're not asleep!), but I think I managed to capture the feel and some of the energy of these kids.

Party Line

No, it's not a political post. It's a post that shows my age! Yesterday's prompt was "The walls have ears." I was stumped for a while for what to do, and when I checked on the Facebook feed, others had already illustrated some of my initial ideas, but Kirsten came to my rescue today with this one, and then I expanded on the thought.

"Back in the day," as my teenagers would say (or during "yesteryear" or "yore," per Rachel), not only were the telephones mounted on (and permanently attached by a cord to) the wall, but because every line was a "party line" (which is what they called it when you shared a phone line with your neighbors and all they had to do is pick up their phone to listen in on your conversations), the walls definitely had ears!

I can remember my mother putting her hand over the mouthpiece of the phone (not one quite this ancient, it was the 1960s, but still a wall phone in the kitchen) and saying to my dad, "I know that nosy Mrs. Rosenberg is listening in!" Sometimes my dad would be talking to someone and then stop and say "I can hear you breathing! Hang up! I'm not done yet!" and there would be a gentle but audible "click."

It wasn't long before the party line became a thing of the past, but while it lasted you were sometimes more involved with your neighbors than you wanted to be. I guess calling it a "party line" made it seem more festive than "snoop heaven" or "no privacy for you."

I drew this with an 0.3 LePen, and then watercolored. This one's for you, Kirst.

It's all about the weather

How fortuitous that the past two day's prompts have lent themselves perfectly to the climate in So Cal. For once the MegaDoppler 700 HD was right: El Niño has apparently arrived, right on schedule. Our Every Day in January prompts for these two days were:

Madder than a wet hen…

and…

It's raining cats and dogs!

I wanted to try to capture this sense of falling so I looked online for photographs of pets that had been tossed in the air. I hope they landed well!

I don't often draw and leave it at that, but the pen alone seemed to be the right thing to capture the wetness and the anatomy of falling through the air. It's also obvious that my pen work could use some work, and that I need to expand my repertoire when it comes to pens--I did these with a Micron, but I'd love to try this again using a pen with ink that flows a little more freely. Time to go look at what the pen aficionados use and spend some salary at the art store!

The sayings continue...

The next couple of days' posts are kind of a mess. Loved the concepts, didn't quite realize either of them. But…just because you fulfill the day's challenge doesn't mean you will always do it well, right?

January 3 was "hell bent for leather." I'm not sure I've heard that all together as one phrase before--I have heard "hell for leather" and "hell bent"--but when I heard it, I immediately thought of horses. So I went looking for a reference photo and found a beautiful one, which captured the blur of speed as a jockey and horse raced by on the track. My interpretation of it was distinctly inferior to the photo; I captured a bit of the feel of speed, but it's kind of a mess:

January 4's prompt is "a heart of gold," and since I am a child of the '60s, where else would I go when hearing that phrase but Neil Young? I combined some elements from various album covers and did a sketch. I painted the lettering first, and then did the background, so everything around the lettering got muddy and bled together; I guess it would have been better to do the background washes first and then paint over the top, but with the transparency of watercolor, I'm never sure what the order should be! I tackled this tonight because tomorrow it's back to work…we'll see how it goes for the remainder of January.

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…

Christmas and Enlightenment

In my family, we draw names and really splash out for one person at Christmas This year, my cousin Heidi was "my" person. I had a list of things she would like to have, plus a few ideas of my own, but as Christmas approached, I realized that I had accumulated quite a few little gifts, but nothing that felt truly special.

She collects Buddha statues, and I always keep an eye out for new and unusual ones, but now her collection is big enough that it's hard to find one sufficiently different from those she already has. I looked, but didn't find anything this year that I liked.

I was looking online at photos of various aspects of the Buddha, and was inspired to paint her a picture instead. I found a photo of a rather beautiful stone statue holding a (stone) lotus blossom, but instead of doing that, I thought it would be cool to replace it with a real one while still painting the Buddha as a statue.

I found a photo of a lotus that I liked--it was mostly pink, but with some yellow, gold, and ivory in its petals. I found out on buddhists.org (yes, really) that different lotus blossoms bear different meanings. First of all, the general meaning is that the lotus grows from mud and water, rising above the murk to achieve enlightenment. Then, the colors change the meaning too: White is purity of mind and spirit; red is compassion and love; blue is common sense; purple is spirituality and mysticism; pink is the historical legends of the Buddha; and finally, gold represents achievement of all enlightenment. So (although I chose the colors before I knew the significance) this one is wishing Heidi knowledge of the Buddha, with dawning of all enlightenment!

I think she liked it--I hope she did! I had a good time painting it.