Today is the last day of Every Day in May and my drawing is a bit anticlimactic. We spent all day just running around like crazy. I managed to get in a very quick sketch while we were sitting at the Noodle Company. Just a quick scribble of a nearby chair to end the month.
Only one more day to go for Every Day in May 2010. With Memorial Day and the family grilling out, somehow this water tower seemed appropriate. (LOL)
I went to Walmart today to buy replacement heads for our electric toothbrushes. They were locked up!! We had to have an associate get them. She said someone had recently stolen all the ones on display. Honestly, who steals toothbrush heads??? We live in a supposedly nice, safe suburb but it seems crime is increasing everywhere these days.
This scanned so light I tried to color correct it, but the corrected version seems kinda fake to me.
This happens a lot to me with pencil drawings. Any suggestions on how to fix it? I scanned it with and without black paper beside it.
This was supposed to be for the Monthly Sketch Project, but I keep getting the dates mixed up. I thought I had till the end of the month but it closed on the 27th, bummer. Anyway, Chrissy took a wonderful photo that was a lot of fun to draw from and filled my slot for EDinM today.
I'm playing catch up with my EDinM posts, again. I wanted to get in a few sketches of people, but I decided to try practicing with Manny first...
Since it has been sunny we managed to get in some ballgames....
Today I intended to sketch another little old church. I got carried away with the tower and didn't have room or time enough for the rest of the church so this is just a sketch of a bell tower. Actually, now that I think of it since it had no bell, is it a steeple??
Normally DH takes R4 to his baseball practice, but hubby had stuff to do for work so I took him to it. I brought along my sketchbook so I could get in some practice of my own-- drawing people. We were the first people there so it was easy to set up my folding chair and get all nice and comfy with my feet propped up on the side of the bleachers. While the boys were warming up and playing catch I managed to get a sketch that remotely resembles a ball player.
After that, they mainly had pitching and batting practice. I tried to get a handle on sketching the batters, but didn't have any luck. Working on the foreshortening in their stances and the changing batters was hard enough, but then this other parent, who had been sitting at the far end of the bleachers, plunked down right in front of me!!! Grrrr!! So I sketched him, take that Mr!! LOL!!!
I'm catching up on my EDinMs since we finally had a sunny day today and I could get out and sketch buildings. While I was sketching this church from my van DH and the kiddos stopped by in his car. R2 snuck up on me and scared me to death while I was sketching. Luckily, I was just doing the pencil part so the wild mark I made on the page was easily removed. DH is the bestest, the reason they stopped by was to bring me a caramel sundae since it was really hot and muggy out!!
I started sketching this ivy covered barn right before sundown. It was greyish white, but the sunset cast a lovely golden light on it. While I was sketching the lady whose house I was parked in front of came out to see what I was there for, a policeman slooooowly cruised next to me, and two dogwalkers chatted about what a neat old barn it was.
This final sketch was right at sundown. It got so dark in the van that I couldn't see the color of the paint in my palette box so I finished it at home.
So there, I'm all caught up again.
I ran around like a crazy person on Tuesday shopping with the kiddos. All I have to show for the 18th is a quick scribble of feet, well a foot and an extra toe peeking out. My son said, "it must be pretty bad if all you can come up with are your own feet." Cheeky boy...
The drawing for the 19th is one of my favorite fountain pens, a Conklin Crescent. Supposedly this was one of Mark Twain's as well, since it was easy to fill, wrote for a long time and the crescent prevented swearing caused by his pen rolling away from him! I just like the feel of the nib and the fact that something nearly 100 years old is still a joy to work with today. The pen was originally black chased rubber, but sometime during its long life it was exposed to sunlight and oxidized to a nice mellow brown.
Yes, the time stamp for this post is correct. Once again I'm posting in the wee hours. I really need to get my hours straightened out...........
After I dropped our older kids off at the teen devo, I drove over to sketch in a little old, historic downtown. Someone had converted this filling station into a barbecue joint, of all things! DH and our youngest son were with me. I sketched and R4 did homework and DH did stuff for his job. I'm surprised a policeman didn't stop by-- I was scribbling away on a pad, DH was ploinking on a computer and lugging paperwork back and forth from the back of the van-- we could have been plotting rather nefarious deeds, LOL!!
My second oldest son, R2, had been out with me getting in a bit of driving practice and when we got home we found this little guy in our driveway. I got out to shoo the bunny off the drive so he could pull the van in. Mr. bunny really wasn't very afraid of me. He just hopped off a few feet into some grass under the maple tree from my last post. He seemed pretty content to sit there watching us watch him. This was too good to pass up. My son has been playing with a new lens for his camera and so he took a few pics of the bunny for me. I think it was fun to combine our hobbies and draw from one of his photos.
I didn't get to post yesterday, so I'm doubling up today. This is the courthouse tower on the city square just around the corner from where I found the log cabin I drew for the twelfth. I only did the tower because it was impossible to get a place where I could park long enough to draw and see the whole courthouse. When I found a decent place to park, it had buildings blocking the body of the courthouse. Actually, it was no big deal as I was just interested in the clock tower really.
We planted Japanese Maples (I think) in our front yard a few years ago and either I am really unobservant or this is the first year for them to make seeds. I found a little green whirligig seed pod on the drive today. I'm pretty sure we've never had them before from our trees, but when I looked at our little tree it had tons on it. I plucked one off the tree, along with a leaf, to draw tonight. I wonder if a tree has to be so old or big to make the little seed pods??
This is another double duty drawing. This is for EDinM for the 13th and also for the May challenge for the Monthly Sketch Project. This is based on a photo submitted to the group by Chrissy.
I'm still working on my problems with drawing buildings. I really love old barns so when I saw this one with a convenient little pull off nearby I couldn't resist. I pulled off and parked the van and started sketching.
R4 didn't feel well so we sent the menfolk off to church without us. The house was quiet so I picked up one of my Native American flutes and started noodling around playing a few hymns on them. When one would wet out I went on to the next, until I came to this Quena/ NAF hybrid. Somedays I wonder if I'll ever get the hang of the embouchure for this rim blown. When it works it sounds lovely, but getting it to work.....
I was planning to draw another building tonight after dropping the kiddos off for their teen devo, but it was pouring outside. Instead, I came home and did a quickie from a picture on the WetCanvas gallery.
I didn't get to sketch a building, but I did do a little still life with a prop. This is an old Kewpie doll knockoff. My son, R2 (No, not the Star Wars droid! All the kiddos names begin with Rs so we have R1-R4.) said it looked like a little piggy. I agree.
My EDinM entries for the fifth, sixth and seventh are doing double duty. They are my contribution to an art journal round robin that I am playing in. Planning and drawing for the round robin has been keeping me pretty busy, so I'm going to let them stand for my EDinM entries for the days I completed them on.
The theme of the round robin is Journey to the Imagination. Any time I start a drawing project my children ask if I am going to be drawing chibis. No matter what I draw, they like the manga the best, especially my chibis. So for the first spread I did my little chibi alter ego reading the book, The Scarlet Pimpernel and imagining herself as the heroine, Marguerite. The text is from the Gutenberg Project. I played with it in Photoshop then transferred it onto an inked spread in the book using Sheer Heaven paper. I added in the colored chibis then finished off with some Twinkling H20s paints. I wish the scan had caught how the Twinkling paint shimmers and shifts colors....
On the sixth I worked on a spread that was inspired by a poem that I love, The Stolen Child, by William Butler Yeats. I borrowed a line from the poem and changed it a bit to issue an invitation to an imaginary realm.
For the last entry, I drew a firebird since I'm fond of firebirds (obviously XD). and because flights of fancy are imagination in overdrive. I did this on crumpled masa and pasted it between the other two spreads.
I was over by Unity Village after dropping off my children for a teen devo, and I thought that it would be a lovely place to draw. The campus is so lovely, but a lot of the visual goodies were roped off due to what looked like construction. I found this little Hobbit-like house sunk partially into the ground with an incredibly tall chimney and couldn't resist trying to sketch it. I sat on some steps and got to work. Thankfully it is a pretty safe place because I zoned out while I was drawing. Some people came down the steps and were walking past me before I even knew they were there. That was a wake up call for me to pay more attention to basic safety rules.
I really have problems with perspective and buildings so today's sketch is a building, of course! I want to be able to sketch interesting buildings and get the flavor of a place when we go sightseeing onto the pages of my travel journals. I know the only way to do this is practice so........... Putting myself into tourist mode, I drove over to an interesting little old church in our town. I parked across the way from it and working over my steering wheel drew and painted this little sketch. It's not perfect, but it is a start.
It's that time of year again, time for the annual Every Day in May drawing marathon to begin. A lot of people from the Every Day Matters group draw and post every day in May. This year some are revisiting the first Every Day matters challenges and using that as their theme. That is what I drew today, EDM Challenge #1, draw a shoe. I don't know if I'll stick to this theme, yet. I had toyed with the idea of using EDinM to force me to work on some of my fears/weak areas- drawing real people and getting the perspective right for buildings. I think for now my official goal for the month is to draw from life, whether it is an old EDM challenge or not. I tend to rely a lot on photos for drawing, and I'd like to get out of that rut.
Joyfully exploring God's world through the artof watercolor, pen, and ink.
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