Moving backward and forward

Two more for the EDiM prompts, one for tomorrow, and one for three days ago:

#6: FLAT

I'd just been reading The Princess Diaries for my 6+7 Book Club, and briefly considered painting Princess Mia (since all she does for 200-some interminable pages is complain about being flat-chested!), but I decided to be a bit more literal.

And...

#2: STICKY

I love weird sayings that make their way into the English language to be used in other ways. I have often used the expression "sticky wicket" without knowing its precise derivation, so I looked up today, and came upon this beer namesake. (The sticky wicket itself is just a big plot of muddy grass, so not very interesting to draw/paint!)

Micron pen and watercolor for both. (We're supposed to be trying out new tools, but...what can I say? not into it right now. Maybe later. I did stick with the limited palette--we're not supposed to use more than three tools or three colors.)

Every Day in March

So far, I have been sick every day in March...and for what seemed like half the days in February, as well. Seriously, two weeks and counting: Sinus infection, which led to eye infection, which led to ear infection.

I didn't spend my time wholly in vain; during the first week of illness, when I could still hear the TV (!), I mainlined Netflix. I decided to try out Orange is the New Black, and ended up making it through all three seasons. (WHEN does season 4 start?!) So when today's EDiM topic was "on TV," I knew what to paint.

The challenge this month is to use tools unfamiliar to you, or at least to use tools in different combinations and with limited palettes. I had a watercolor pencil lying on my desk that looked orange (it turned out to be more red, so I had to add some yellow paint), so I used it to draw with, then used plain water to spread the color around, and added a couple of accent colors after. It's kind of a blunt instrument in terms of drawing, so the likeness was harder to grasp, but here she is: Piper Chapman, in her orange jumpsuit.

After I finished her and posted on the Facebook site, I was browsing the drawings of others and saw a great one of Hillary Clinton that Shaw Sys had done for the day one prompt, which was "Women's History Month." So I decided to do a drawing of my current hero, Ruth Bader Ginsberg. Micron pen, and two colors of watercolor.

Long may she reign!

Mad Hatter

At the library, Anarda and I just hosted a "Mad Tea Party" for the teens, with special guest Frank Beddor. Frank wrote the trilogy called The Looking Glass Wars, which is a retelling of Alice in Wonderland, and then branched out with some artists and wrote the Hatter M graphic novels (there are five so far, I think). In preparation for this party, we read not one but two retellings, one (Frank's) with the 6+7 Book Club, and the other (Splintered, by A. G. Howard) with the 8+9 Book Club, hoping the novels would spike interest in attending the event. It apparently worked, because we had 50 kids show up, about 20 of them in costume.

I say all this to explain why the Mad Hatter was on my mind when I went to make a birthday card for Anarda! We (Anarda, some of her friends, her mama and her husband) were all going out to a celebratory dinner tonight, and I needed a card to go with my gift, which was an appropriately themed teapot with matching sugar and creamer set.

He's not quite as mysterious and dark as I wanted him to be (I waited until the last minute, as usual, and he was barely dry before I stuffed him into her birthday bag), but he's a good start. Maybe I'll give it another try, with more leisure. Or, maybe I'll do a completely different character! I wasn't wild about the story line in the Howard book, but the descriptions were luminous -- well worth trying to illustrate.

Pencil and watercolor on 140-lb. Fluid Watercolor Paper, with some Micron pen details added afterwards.

By the way, the punch line on the inside read "That's why we like her so much!" (in case you thought I was dissing my buddy)

Traveling

I've given up on the Every Day in February challenge, mostly because I didn't want to "go" to most of the places on my list. I'm sure that Laos and Kenya and Russia are beautiful, interesting places with a lot to offer a painter, but I've never had a single impulse to go to any of them. I guess, underneath it all, I'm just a European to my core, because the places I yearn for are France, Italy, Spain, Greece, anywhere in the British Isles...so I decided I'd do a little traveling on my own instead, and looked through my computer folder of reference photos I've saved over the years--some I took myself, others that I found online.

Some people think it's unethical to paint from the photos of others (and in fact there is a website called "Paint My Photo," on which people give explicit permission for you to use their photos as references in that way), but for the most part the drawings and paintings I make only use the photos as a jumping-off point and turn out so differently that probably the photographer him- or herself wouldn't recognize them. At least, that's my justification. Am I wrong?

So--here's my first solo foray, this one to an intimate view somewhere in France. I love shutters, many-paned windows, and hanging flower boxes, framed by the old tea-colored stone of several-hundred-year-old buildings, don't you?

I challenged myself because I was short on time this morning, so the drawing took 20 minutes and the painting took 30. I am dumfounded by people who seem to do a complete, finished-looking painting in that time (or less!)--I guess it's a combination of practice, skill and knowing what to put in and what to leave out. Anyway, LePen and watercolor of shutters and flower baskets. It probably would have benefited from another 10 or 15 minutes of judicious shading, but..I'm calling it finished.

For Valentine's Day

My ex loved coffee shops. I ate more patty melts, tuna melts, and chili sizes in my seven years of marriage than I have in the many decades since. (Of course, becoming a vegetarian a few years after the divorce might have something to do with that.) So when we moved into our first home (in which I still live, 30 years later), we scoured the neighborhood for the best local. There was a Denny's, of course, but chains didn't count--it had to be authentic, preferably family owned.

About a mile up Balboa, on the corner of Saticoy, we discovered Heart's Coffee Shop, and it looked like the perfect local hangout...but we went there exactly once. Although the sign and decor were right on the money (red vinyl bar stools! my ex enthused), the food wasn't very good, and the service was terrible. It was one of the times when I put my foot down and said "Once was enough!" and we never went back there.

I have, however, always loved the sign (especially the handwritten-on-paper part!), so I thought I'd do a sketch just for Valentine's Day. I'll bet there will be a bunch of lovers who will go there for breakfast today, so they can take a photo in front of the heart-bedecked decor. I hope the food and the service have improved since the '80s, so that they enjoy more than the ambiance. Maybe I'll give it another shot one adventurous Saturday morning.

Another country?

Not really, although sometimes Burbank feels like another country. People in Burbank who have lived there all their lives have a weird dedication to the place. I mean, I've lived in Van Nuys (admittedly a whole different ball of wax when it comes to almost everything) for 35 years, but apart from a certain fondness for my immediate neighborhood, the idea of loyalty to "my" city seems pretty absurd to me. But there are people in Burbank who won't go to a restaurant or a hairdresser outside the city borders. I mean, I'd understand if it was, say, Paris...but Burbank?

Anyway, with this sketch I guess I'm expressing the same sort of parochial behavior, because instead of finding a photo of something from Japan to paint, I chose to paint the teriyaki and tempura place down the street from my library. (I did throw in the cherry blossoms as a nod....) I'm a vegetarian, so I don't go to "the Yak" much, but they do make a nice veg and tofu stir-fry, when I'm desperate for lunch and only have half an hour to spare.

The odd thing about this place is the concept of "drive-thru." There is no order window like there is at a fast food place; instead, you drive up to a window at the side of the indoor counter, you place your order just like you were standing at that counter, and then you sit in your car and wait for it. The window is screened, so somebody has to run your order out to your car and take your money. I can't imagine being patient enough (lazy enough?) to sit with my car running (or sit three cars back from the front) for the entire time it takes to make a tempura platter or five--why not just come in? But there is a constant line of cars next to the building every day.

I drew this with a Uniball pen, which surprisingly didn't smear, and painted with watercolor. Oh, and this one is for Suhita Shirodkar--although I can't approach her atmospheric drawings of odd signs around town, she's the one who inspired this idea.

Affinity

Do you think it's true that you make better art when you have an affinity for the subject matter? That people have a particular aptitude, say, for still life, landscape, figure art, and struggle with other subjects? Or does one talent eventually lead to another...but only if you branch out and try them?

I haven't done much in the way of landscape--most of my paintings and drawings are "set pieces" wherein I set out some objects on a table and draw from life--a book, a candlestick, some lemons...so when I discovered that Every Day in February was a travelogue, with a painting "from" each location to which we virtually travel, I was both reluctant and excited.

Also, there are some countries on the list of "Every Day in February" to which I have no desire to go, no particular curiosity to discover more about them. Then there are others that I think of as part of my eventual fate--one of the many dreams that we start out with in our youth:

"I'd like to be a book editor and live in an apartment at the heart of New York City."

"I'd like to have a farm in the Cotswolds and raise horses."

"I'd like to be an architect with an office right on the boardwalk in Venice Beach, and roller skate to work."

"I'd like to learn French and become a pastry chef in Paris."

"I'd like to live on the water somewhere and have a little boat to potter about in."

The countries that have figured especially large in my daydreams (apart from various places in the USA) are Greece, France, and Ireland. How fortunate, therefore, that when I came (late) to the February party, two of my first three drawings were set in the lands of my affinity!

While there are many aspects to Ireland (small villages, bustling towns, countryside, ocean cliffs), here is one wherein we inhabit a tiny cob and thatch cottage at the edge of a lake, with a handy rowboat tied up nearby.

Drawn with LePen, painted with watercolor.