Life Drawing and Life In General

 Before I start today's post, I'd like to thank all of you for your wonderful comments and for all the positive energy you are sending my way. It made my day!


I drove into Jackson for my Life Drawing class this morning only to find that I had no cash on me, so I will owe double next time. I'm not sure what I was thinking (or not thinking) this morning. It felt good to be sketching again. I did a bit of drawing at Mom's, but not much.


Here is my first two 5 minute warm ups

And then I stayed for two 20 minute poses. I really have a hard time with hands and feet and am always tempted to just print the word "hand" or "foot" in their stead.

I always feel that I have to draw the entire figure, but wish I'd remember to just focus on some portion of it - like a hand or foot. Maybe I could see some improvement if I would do more of that.

I have a watercolor that I started a long, long time ago that has been calling to me. I think it needs shadows. Whenever I look at it I think it is too one dimensional and is mostly mid tones. I will be working on it a bit today and will show you my progress as I go. Comments and suggestions are certainly welcome.

I finally unpacked this morning before I headed to town for the life drawing class, but have quite a bit of house work to get this place ready for the annual Memorial Day party that we host here. I hope you are healthy and happy and that you are finding time for yourself on this fine May day.

xoxo

Life and Family

I've been away up north in the UP visiting family for the past 10 days or so and although I've been reading your blogs, I haven't been commenting much. I took my iPad with me, but stayed with family and didn't really take the time.

Just before I left to go north, I went to the ophthalmologist because I'd been experiencing some fuzziness in my only sighted eye. He found that I am in the early stages of age-related macular degeneration. The doctor thinks the vision problems that I presented with are another iteration of my "aura without migraine" history. I was so shocked at the diagnosis that I didn't ask questions. I have since done much research and found that you don't usually go blind from this condition, but you do become legally blind. This means no driving, difficulty reading, inability to recognize faces, and problems seeing the world in color. The "good" news I found in the literature is that for most people who are diagnosed, their other eye takes on much of the sight and can be really helpful. However, I am only sighted in the affected eye. The other eye suffers from a combination of amblyopia (lazy eye) and farsightedness and is not correctable. I am determined not to let this diagnosis reduce the quality of my life until there is a noticeable difference in my vision.

I drove to St. Ignace to spend two nights with my Mom, who also suffers from macular degeneration (she is 87 and is coping quite well). We played a lot of cribbage, watched the Tigers baseball games, and visited my sister Mags who has MS and is wasting away (I am blown away by her positive attitude and feel I have much to learn from her) and my sister, Molly.


I then drove to Marquette to visit my sister, Anne, who used to live just two hours away and is now about 7 hours north. We had a great visit. I love her condo and the community where she lives. One of the days I was with her, we drove to Michigamee to visit my blog friend, Joan, of The Retirement Chronicles. What a great visit that was. We clicked right away. I can't wait to go visit her again.


I have just a little bit of art to share with you and then I have to jump on my horse and get to my daughter's house to get her third grader to school and bring Miss 4 out here. I am getting my hair cut and my first pedicure of the season this morning, so Papa will take Miss 4 to afternoon preschool later.

I will be visiting you later today and hope to really catch up with you. Until then, I hope you are doing well and that you are finding time for yourself and your creativity.

xoxo

This and That

In the past couple of days I've been doing a bit of sketching in between bursts at the watercolor/soft pastel beach scene and haven't taken the time to post them, so today is a bit of a miscellany. First up, a large flower trillium, which I sketched from a picture in my "Wild Flowers of North America" book.

This is in my Rhodia journal that I love, but the pages are a creamy color and as you can see the back of the page shows through.

I also did a quick sketch of a turkey that is actually a composite of several photos online and life. It is amazing the number of turkeys you see in the fields these days.

I should probably add some color.

I've added another "nature" drawing in my Dutch book - this time Pears hanging in a tree. I do seem to be going through a pear phase, both in my art and in my diet. I love pears!

And, last but not at all least, I've worked a bit more on the latest self portrait and am declaring it done. As a matter of fact, I think I will now use this sketch as my avatar as the one I am currently using is more than 5 years old.

This morning I have my life drawing class and will try to do freer sketching. I have some Conte sketching crayons now and am looking forward to trying them. I may take some colored pencils, too. I have a few errands to run and need to stop in to see Miss 4 to see if she has something I can use as part of the niche treasure for my altered book. I'd really like to try my hand at collage in the front of that book once the niche is done. I haven't done that kind of art in a while and remember really enjoying it.

I hope you are having a wonderful and productive (or lazy, as it suits) day and that you are finding time for yourself and your creative side.

xoxo

Playing With Pastels

I did a bit of research about soft pastels online and found that nearly everywhere I looked the beginner was being advised to take the paper off the beautiful new colors and break them into more useful sizes. It took me several days to actually do this (something just seemed wrong about "defacing" brand new art materials), but I'd decided to try to add some soft pastel to my watercolor beach scene, so I did it. Here is some of the mess:

I am so thrilled to find that the baby wipes that I used to clean my fingers off in between colors have dried and the color doesn't appear to be coming off when I rub. I think these will have to find their way into my mixed media altered book.

Once I had removed the paper and broken the soft pastels I was ready to try adding some color to the watercolor beach scene. The paper is extremely textured so I wasn't sure how this was going to go. After the first attempt, I emailed a copy of the picture to my dear sister, Anne, for some feedback.

She thought it was really nice with the added color, but wished the chairs were a bit larger and that the shadow on the beach  wasn't quite so blue and dark. I really wanted the sky to be the main focus of the painting with the chairs being a secondary focal point, so I didn't change their apparent size, but did try to add a bit of shadow to them. I tried to put a bit of lighter color into the shadow on the beach, though. My own critique was that the fences (particularly the one on the right) were lost a bit and that the diagonal swipe of blue in the upper right sky was too linear. Here is what it looks like now. I don't know if this is the end or if I will "fiddle" more.

I think I like this one better, but would really appreciate any feedback you are prepared to offer.

I am hoping to do a bit more organizing of these pastels. I bought an art storage thingy via an online art blog from someone in Florida (sorry I can't remember from whom) and think, based on the searching I did online yesterday looking for storage ideas,  it was intended for pastels. It is about 15 inches wide, 9 inches deep and has three drawers. Here is the one that I put one piece of each color into.

I tried cutting up the 1/4" foam that was over the original pastels in their box, but it is not working very well. I think instead I will put a bit of rice in the bottom of each compartment (another tip I read about online) and assign one compartment to each color group. I'll let you know how that works.

Well, it is almost 1 pm and I haven't had breakfast yet. I suppose I need some brunch actually. I am happy to report that I did make it to my conditioning class this morning and have already made a good start on this day. Who knows what the rest of this lovely day will bring.

I hope you are doing well and that you are finding time to be creative. Please do give me a critique on the soft pastel over watercolor beach scene that is in this post above; I'd really appreciate it.

xoxo

A Bit of Art and A Boatload of Frustration

I have a bit of art to share with you this morning and then I will clue in to what is happening in my little world. Maybe you will have something to say to help me get over it or maybe you even know the answer to life's little dilemmas.


First the bit of art - I am still playing in the Dutch book and I am using a book I found on sale for $3.99 at Schuler Books some time ago, "A Pocket Guide to Wild Flowers in North America" for reference.

When I was showing this one to Miss M the other evening, she was caressing some of my brushes - she loves the softness of them. She just happened to have a fan brush and wanted to see how to use it. So I spritzed a bit of watercolor that was in the palette and let her have a go at it. That is what the green and red strokes at the bottom are.

I am also working in my Rhodia notebook that I was given a couple of years to review - actually I was given two and gave one of them away on this blog in 2010. I sketched half a face in a doorway and am quite pleased with how it turned out (well maybe not the nose so much).

And the last bit of art in progress - four small sketches (about 4.5 x 6 inches each) on watercolor paper. I haven't decided if I will use Neocolor IIs, oil pastels, soft pastels, watercolor.........to add some color to them, but will keep you posted.

Trying to do little girl faces to be recognizable is very difficult. I worked on Miss M's face for hours and finally gave up at 4:30 am and went to bed. You can see it is much darker than the rest of her. Fiddlestix! If you click on it you will be able to see the four sketches more clearly.

And I also tried my hand at a landscape with a cabin in it from a photo I got through a national park website.

I hope to get some work play in on these sketches today. I was up so late last evening because my LaCie drive that I just purchased is failing to do Time Machine backups to keep all my data safe. I went to the LaCie site and did some troubleshooting yesterday early afternoon, part of which advised reformatting and then zeroing out the drive which took all day during which time I couldn't use my computer. It didn't finish that process until late last evening, so just before turning in for the night, I set it up as my Time Machine back up drive. GRRRRRRR! I woke up this morning to the same error message I was getting before doing all that troubleshooting. I've sent an email to the LaCie support team to see what they can do.

I was so happy to hear that I could "fix" my pastel drawings with hair spray, but that has eluded me as well. First I bought the only kind of hair spray they had at the dollar store, but it was way too wimpy. The instructions on it actually suggested spraying damp hair before using a blow dryer and then adding more when hair had dried. The last time I was at Meijers, I purchased a can of Extreme Hold hairspray and tried that. No luck - if I run a finger over the artwork, I still lift color. GRRRRR!

I went through the drawer in the filing cabinet in my work room which holds my gesso and other Golden products to see what I had in there that might work instead of buying new fixative. I found I have Krylon Workable Fixatif, Grumbacher Matte Workable Fixative, and Grumbacher Matte Final Fixative. I don't know how old they are, but can't find an expiration date on any of them. If it ever quits raining and/or the humidity decreases a bit, I will take my Mi Teintes journal out and try one of these in the hopes of finally achieving success.

I didn't go to Zumba last evening as my stomach was a bit queasy - maybe all that frustration I've been holding in - and now I feel really out of sorts. I guess I will get on the treadmill in a bit and see if I can chase the blues away.

On a more upbeat note, I got a call from the library to say that a few of the books I'd reserved through MelCat had arrived and when I went over there I found that I actually had 6 books - all about either pastels or watercolor. There is one by Jackie Simmonds that I am absolutely in love with - maybe it will be my next purchase for my art room library.

Thanks for listening to all my complaints (if you actually read this far) and for all your support of my attempts at becoming a better artist. I hope you are having a great day and that you are finding time to be creative in your world.

xoxo