Here's the reveal

Here's what I couldn't cover up except by electronic means...see the gray streak in the shadow?

EDM Challenges 2, 14, 32, ???

Trying to work in a bunch of challenges in one pic. This is "what I see in the morning when I get up" (#14), which is my bedside table; "a lamp" (#2), "something metallic" (parts of the lamp and the top of the table, though I couldn't make the table top look like metal) (#32), and also #27 ("draw a book"), though I've already done that a bunch of times!

This one broke my heart--I was 90 percent done, and pretty happy with it. I decided to put some shadows on my (white) walls behind the lamp, made one hasty and too-dark stroke of gray onto dry paper, and couldn't lift it. So I made the walls turquoise and accentuated the light-fall to camouflage it, but it didn't work all that well. I Photoshopped this a bit to get rid of the worst of it. Guess I won't be framing the real one.

Draw something "October"--my birthday bouquet

Five years ago, I planted a five gallon can of asters, sort of like this one, in the flower bed along the side of my garage:

Five years later, with lots of natural reseeding, the picture below shows what the flower bed looks like!

Asters are long-legged, weedy plants when you let them go wild like this, and must be cordoned off so they don't completely cover the sidewalk. Until they bloom, they are not particularly attractive, since the leaves at the bottom turn brown and fall off while the top half is getting ready to blossom, but oh, when they do bloom!

My neighbors kindly put up with the sidewalk (which we share) being out of commission for the last two months of the asters' growth cycle, just to arrive at that all-important month, October, when the stalks are covered with the small, daisy-like purple flowers (and with many ecstatic bees, june-bugs and butterflies).

Since the asters always oblige me by coming out just in time for my birthday on October 4, I decided to cut a few this morning (they're barely started, not in full glory) and combine them with some Mexican sage, some orange double marigolds, and a crimpy little scented geranium in a white transfer-ware pitcher that was my mom's. I added in a couple of tubes of (appropriately colored) paint just for interest. Unfortunately, I didn't notice until I finished that not only had I placed the horizon line at an awkward height in relation to the pitcher, but that it was at exact dead center across the page--deadly! Oh, well...

This satisfies Challenge #245--draw something "October." Asters.

Slightly creepy books for October

I'm indulging myself in a reading marathon this weekend (although I'm combining this indulgence with work, since I need to keep up with my young adult novels), and these two are to recommend on the library blog for teens.
The Midnight Twins is by Jacquelyn Mitchard, who wrote The Deep End of the Ocean (and a lot of other books, of course), and it's the first of a series about sisters named Meredith and Mallory, who come from a long line of psychic twins. Born two minutes before midnight and two minutes after on New Year's Eve, one sees the past and one the future. In this book, they discover their powers and have to solve a mystery and foil a bad guy.

The Replacement falls into a category with a lot of recent teen fiction about the world of faerie, but is quite superior to many of those. It's the first novel by Brenna Yovanoff, and after reading this, I look forward to seeing what she comes up with next. The protagonist is one of those changelings left behind when the faeries steal the human child from the cradle. This changeling, however, has parents and a loving sister who know what he is and raise him as if he was their real child anyway. The book opens when Malcolm is a teenager, struggling with his health in a world full of iron and blood. A little girl has just died in their town, but her older sister, a classmate of Malcolm's, insists that the child they buried wasn't her sister Natalie, and Malcolm, who has a good idea who (or what) the child was, struggles with his emotions as he tries to stay under the radar of the suspicious townsfolk while helping the girl he likes get her sister back before it's too late.

These were kind of a cheat, artistically, because I was in a hurry and because I was working against the light on my patio (I keep forgetting that it gets dark now at 6:15 instead of at 8:00!). I propped the book on the left up against my coffee mug, so they are not on the same plain, but the background doesn't reflect that, which it should. I also went in after with a pen and tweaked a bunch of stuff because I was so sloppy when I painted. So, not the greatest illustration, but enough to use to feature these two entertaining and slightly creepy books.

Sharp Teeth again

Well, I darkened up some elements, and then I tried the spatter, but because I've never done it before, it came out more like arterial spray, which was a little too graphic (despite the fact that there probably IS some somewhere in the book), so I painted most of it out and added in a deep yellow background, as well as some shadow elements. I'm going to crop it tightly and give it as a gift to the girl who suggested the book for six months in a row, finally got it voted in as our choice, and then was disappointed. Maybe it will make up for it a bit.

Thanks for the suggestions, everyone!

A master watercolorist

Frank Eber mentioned Joseph Zbukvic with great admiration, so I decided to have a look. You should too...truly a master.

http://www.jzbukvic.com/

Saturday workshop with Frank Eber

Today, I went to an all-day workshop at my local art store (Continental Art Supply, in Reseda--if you live in Los Angeles and don't know it, go there immediately!) with watercolor artist Frank Eber. His work is really gorgeous--I put his blog link in my "favorite blogs" list, but here it is as well: http://frankeber.wordpress.com/

It was an enjoyable yet extremely humbling experience for me. When I paint, it is very tightly, usually quite planned out, and I guess not very characteristic of watercolor technique. It is my own style, and I enjoy it, but I also want to expand and try other things, and I so love watercolor that actually reflects the medium in its beautiful slapdash-looking swashiness.

Frank works wet, layers his washes, and does just enough but no more to barely indicate what he's painting--a boat, a cow, a taxi, a tree--and yet when he's done, it is arresting, evocative, and looks exactly how he intended it to look. I know (because he said so and also because you can see it in his work) that he has pushed himself hard for years to achieve the ease with which he works; but we all want to think that we can do something once or twice and master it, don't we? Sadly...no.

This is the second of two paintings we worked on for the day. (The first one was too embarrassing to show, and I'm not thrilled with this one either, but this blog is about showing efforts as well as successes, so....) He had a great teaching method--he would demonstrate step one (a graduated wash, for instance), we would return to our desks and execute it, then he would show us step two, and we'd do it, and so on. It was an effective way of learning a lot of information in a short period of time. It was also interesting to watch the other students and see the 10 different renditions that originated from the same source material and instructions.

A well-spent Saturday.