Why I Need This

It's been a busy week. On top of the normal non-creative activities, I started working with a new client and also worked on my taxes. Last night, I pulled out my cheap sketchbook for scribbles and just drew shapes that were around me. This is really cheap paper. I probably should not draw on both sides of the page, but I do anyway. This paper is for rough stuff and for scribbles.

After warming up, I noticed that he was both holding a cat and a phone, so I started a fast, mostly blind contour sketch. Of course, both he and the cat moved before I got very far. I started another drawing below it and did not get very far on that one either.

All in all, I probably spent 10 minutes or so doing this type of sketching, but it was enough to clear and relax my mind. I crossed over. What I mean by that is that I was caught up in seeing the shapes in front of me and trying to capture them. Everything else melted away in my mind. The constant background buzz in my brain stopped. It is so refreshing and cleansing for one's brain. I really needed it.

Someday, I want to have the time and ability to capture entire scenes, but even if I never get to that point I see value in these little scribbles.

On a different note, I did paint this earlier in the week. I got caught up in trying to paint the frog, rather than trying to paint the shapes and values.

Another Chair

I've been doing some quick sketches or playing with watercolor, where I am mostly trying to figure stuff out so I don't feel the need to post any of it.

Today, I spent the day in class for my professional life. While the class had some good material in it, a lot of it did not apply and it was hard to sit through. I wish that I would have sat in the back, since I could have worked on sketching the backs of people's heads. I did sketch a few things here and there. Unfortunately, I had a not-so-great view of only one chair. In keeping with my new ritual of sketching a chair during either a work-related meeting or training when I am bored out of my mind, here it is.

I do feel that I am making progress in being able to see, compare landmarks, use negative space and all of that!

Frog Failure

Twice, I've tried to paint a frog from a picture. The second try was today. Both attempts were really bad! I switched gears and tried painting a deer instead. While I can certainly see room for improvement, I am also happy with this one, especially the face. It's amazing how much the two tiny dots of white make the eyes come alive!

Still Here!

Actually, I never went away. There just hasn't been much to post, since it's been busy. Several days, all I did was pick up a sketchbook and a pen and rapidly work on blind contour to semi-blind contour drawing. I would make one drawing, draw over that, and so on. The cats were mostly my inspiration and, if they moved in such a way that I could not see the other ear, but I could still see the body, I just went with it. It was very freeing and fun, but it's not much to look at. I call this creating scribble pages. Here are a couple of small sections on one page.

Add caption

I also moved on to week 3 of the Seeing class at Sketchbook Skool. Since I never had time to do any of the week 2 homework, I jumped ahead to week 3. I'll go back and do the week 2 stuff at some point. For week 3, the instructor gave several examples of continuous line drawing and really slowing down to see what you are drawing. We were instructed to take 3 minutes to draw a simple object. Next up is to take 10 minutes to draw 3 objects in the same manner and to paint it in watercolor. So far, I've one a number of one object continuous line drawings.

Finally, I painted last night! It felt good. Actually, I did two paintings from the same picture. The first one was so rusty, it's in the garbage. The second one went better.  

Look at all that black background showing through for his dark spots and stripes. This is a first! Also, I drew this from a picture that was gridded in four equal sections, but on my "canvas" I only marked the center horizontally and vertically, so more of the underlying drawing was done by comparing landmarks to each other.

Wrestling With The Inner Critic

I am pleased to say that I won today's bout with the inner critic or maybe it was a draw. Given the entire experience, I can at least be proud that I didn't lose. Today, I took my brave pill and went to my first Urban Sketcher's event in the Twin Cities. It was at the Cycling Museum of Minnesota.  My skill level is at rudimentary place from all of the participants, based upon the work I saw at the end of the event. That mostly does not matter. I try very hard to compare my work to my work, since none of this comes easily and I haven't been doing it very long.

I started with a rough sketch of a penny-farthing and a partial sketch of an early tricycle for a child. The tricycle may not look like much, because I don't get how to make the different parts distinct enough. Still, I felt pretty good about this and I think practicing drawing chairs helped. 

At best, I was feeling okay. It's hard to be surrounded by a lot of people who were doing beautiful work in their sketchbooks. It makes it easy for doubt to creep in. Plus, the number of objects to choose from was overwhelming. I had a hard time getting focus and figuring out what I wanted to accomplish. I was erasing a lot and that got even worse when I wanted to figure out how to draw the following seat. 

Bicycle seat of doom

I tried to follow the front edge and the back edge, but couldn't figure out how the back line underneath the seat attached the two. I drew and erased and drew and erased again and again and again. It got the voice in my head to a very negative and bad place and I felt awful. After making myself miserable, I decided that working in pencil was the wrong choice and that I needed to let go of the stupid bicycle seat. The picture is so that I can print it out and trace it, when I'm not so mad at it. 

Rather than quit, I made two decisions.  The first was to work in pen and just own the lines that I was drawing. The second was to move onto drawing different handlebars from different angles.While doing this, I remember thinking I'm not them, I'm me, and I need to do what's right for me at this moment. I felt better. There's no picture, since these pages were very messy, After than, I went back to pencil, picked some random bike parts like a back tire and fender, and finished up with a tall unicycle hanging from a beam.

At the end of the session, people were invited to put their sketchbook on the floor so that we could see everyone's work. This was a bit tough. I'm not even close to having the skill to compose and create something pretty or artistic. The best that I can do is represent what I see and many times I don't even get to that point. I expect to struggle with this even as a gain skills, given that I like fussy details and I like accuracy. Sigh. 

Still I am proud that I showed up, I sketched, I worked myself out of a very bad place, and I put my sketchbook down along with the rest.   

Overall, the group seemed friendly and welcoming, although there was zero conversation after people started sketching. I spoke to several people. If my schedule allows, I will try and go again. 

Concert Sketch

I went to see Zac Harris and the American Reverie at the Roots Cellar. Of course, I took the opportunity to sketch. It's especially hard to get anything decent when you sketch in a situation where you can't take any measurements. I'll chalk up everything else that I did as my warm up.  My last sketch of the evening was this one. Both the bass and the base player are little wider in my sketch than in actuality.  Still, I feel pretty good about this one, since again, I could not take any measurements, plus I was sketching in very low light.

Fast And Slow

Here is another fast and slow based upon a technique from the Seeing class in Sketchbook Skool. You try to broadly capture an object in a minute. You go back and slowly draw in the details over your broad interpretation.

I wish a had a bigger round brush to use for water colors. I think it would work and look better. Still, I like the overall effect of this technique. It's not too matchy, matchy, in that the color and the pen do not, and really should not, line up.

Sketchbook Skool Homework For Week 1

Class is in week 2. I am working on my homework for week 1. Fortunately, there are only 2 assignments, with the toast being the first assignment. Plus, I'm doing this for fun, so I'm not going to sweat it. Although by being behind, I'm missing out on the community aspect of the course.

The second assignment was called fast / slow. You paint the rough shape of an object really fast with a big brush. I probably could have used a bigger brush, but I used what I had.  After the watercolor dries, you go back with pen and slow down to actually see and draw the details of the object. I thought about using the antique clock, which was my father's, or my unicycle. It surprised me when I decided to spend some quality time with my vacuum cleaner. I wish that I would have gotten my paint a little darker.

Lyin' Eyes

To steal the title of an Eagles song, I either had a problem today with lyin' eyes or inept hands. I had a few spare moments and decided to try and draw my tangerine in pen. First, I did the top one without measuring. After measuring, it turns out that the tangerine was taller than it was wide. I tried to sync up my eyes and hands to draw it with this relationship, but could not until I got to the bottom one.

I'm still having trouble figuring out how to make expressive marks to show shape, shade, and characteristics in pen, but I know it won't get any better if I don't keep trying.

I also tried to sketch my puppy dog tail (a small cinnamon roll) from Isles Buns & Coffee and decided that I have no clue how to draw frosting versus the rest of the roll. It got another attempt after I indulged in 1/2 the roll, but I didn't really try to do the texture of the frosting. The tall chai tea also garnered several attempts.

If I sound too critical or cranky, I'm not. In the moment, it was wonderful.

For some reason after tackling toast, yesterday, I am really interested in trying to sketch food.

Toast

For Sketchbook Skool's Seeing course, I am already behind.  It is a 6-week course, last week was week 1, and I am just getting around to watching videos and doing homework.  The first assignment was to draw a piece of toast.  The point is to slow down, see the object in front of you, and focus on the shapes. You could either do part of the piece of toast or do the entire thing.

I did this after work when I was really, really tired.  I had a similar experience as the one that I wrote about here.  It's good to spend time in the part of your brain where there are no words.  While I didn't feel completely refreshed when I was done with this sketch, I did feel a lot better.   

This Weekend

I had a lot of output this weekend, since I was away for an arts and crafts focused weekend. We stayed in a state park. Everyone did their own thing, so there were many different activities going on. I brought up knitting, acrylic, watercolor, and drawing. Since there wasn't any WiFi, I got a little behind on my Sketchbook Skool class, but I don't mind and it certainly was not a problem to not have WiFi. All that meant was that I did not do much drawing from life, since I needed to watch the Sketchbook Skool assignments, but I did a little bit of  everything else. Plus, the Sketchbook Skool class that I am enrolled in, Seeing, goes for six weeks and I was bound to get behind at some point!

I did do a few quick sketches, although it was hard to concentrate. There was a lot of hubbub in a small amount of space. Hopefully as I get better drawing skills, that won't be a problem. these tangerines could have used more work and some corrections, especially to the top one. Still, I enjoyed trying to capture the values and shapes with different directions of pencil marks. 

While I worked on a double-knitted hat for a friend, my main goal was to start a scarf that I intend to finish and enter in this year's state fair. The pattern is called winter birch. It's two-color brioche knitting and it's the most complicated thing that I've done. With two-color brioche, you have a "separate" front and back. For the front, you work across with one color of yarn, slide back to the beginning and work the other color of yarn. For the back, you essentially do the same thing. On top of that every row in this pattern is different and there are about 1,000,000 symbols (slight exaggeration) to look up to see what you should be doing. I got about 3 inches done before I figured out that I made an error the last time I was working a row on the front side with the light-colored yarn. That means I have to rip back 4 rows to make the correction. At the time I made this discovery, my brain was too fried. When I took the brioche knitting class from Nancy Marchant, she cautioned not to do brioche when you are tired.

With unlimited time, I finally had time to try a grand experiment! Many years ago at Art 4 Shelter, I purchased the following pen and ink, called "House Cat" by the artist, Mary Lingen. It's completely done in hexagons. I love this piece. I had it framed and it hangs upstairs.

Nope, it's not by me. It's "House Cat" by Mary Lingen.

Some time last year I read a blog post where a person talked about drawing little circular shapes that touch each other and just letting the overall shape grow in whatever direction(s) you want. I don't remember where I found the blog post, but it's a really meditative form of doodling. You get these beautiful shapes. It also does not require any thought, so it works in meetings where you are bored out of your mind, but have to pay attention. 

I've been wanting to try and do a value study using circles, just to see if I could do it and see what type of result that I would get. This piece is 5" x 7". My source picture was 8" x 10" and already had grid lines on it. I decided "what the heck" it will make the dimensions a bit off or weird, but let's see what happens.  

I did another one.

I liked having a background, so I went back and modified the first one.

These were really fun. I really enjoyed the process, but they did take quite a bit of time. Each one took a couple of sittings. My intention was to use bigger circles, but somehow small circles came out of my pen at the start of both drawings. 

I played with watercolor a tiny bit, but I'm not willing to show the results! Here is an acrylic painting for Art 4 Shelter. 

Lastly, I made another attempt at painting Sadie. This is an 8" x 10". Since I don't paint dogs that often, they are hard. It took many tries to get decent eyes. I feel like my paint strokes are getting a little better, but oh, that nose.  It could use work. 

Art 4 Shelter 2017

In two more months, Art 4 Shelter will be happening again. It's hard to believe a year has passed since the last time. I've been doing a few paintings here and there throughout the year to submit to this year's event. It's doubly enjoyable for me. First and foremost, the event raises funds for Simpson Housing Services, whose mission is to house, support, and advocate for people experience homelessness. I provide services to them in my professional life and they are a very worthy organization. Second, after attending the event for many years, it was a thrill (and I confess that it was a little bit stressful) to submit artwork for last year's event. It was fun to see my pieces hanging up with all of the other pieces of art. Last year, one of the people I work with at Simpson, even bought one of my pieces!

I am getting ready to mail in a package for this year's event, so I thought I'd take pictures and document all of them here. All of these are 5" x 7" on paper and will, hopefully, sell for $30 each

So far, there is a bird.

There are a lot of flowers.

Of course, there are cats.

I don't think you are supposed to have favorites, but this last one is my favorite of the batch, This cat's nickname is Mr. Excitement and he lives up to it.

As a point of comparison, here is where I was at last year. Admittedly, I did paint this one fairly loose and I could have done something with the eyes, but I kind of liked it as is. It has a "day of the dead" feeling to me. This year's painting and last year's were from different pictures and I didn't intend to use the same background color. Weird!

Art 4 Shelter - 2016

Building Sketch

After work, I found myself near the grounds of the Minnesota State Fair. Since I still want / need to work on sketching the basic shapes of buildings, I gave this one a try. I feel like I'm trying a lot of things all at once with starting an online class at Sketchbook Skool, being partial through a different online class on Craftsy, and also painting when I can. Still, I figure if I do a little something each day (or most days), I'll learn and, hopefully, get better.

If you are familiar with this building (the one near the West end), you will know that I ignored the mechanical stuff, mostly because I didn't have time.

Surprise - - It's A Painting Of A Cat!

I had some goals for what I wanted to accomplish with this painting, namely:

• Less blocky long paint strokes and more thumbprint paint strokes. 
• Better ears.
• Less defined edges.
• More suggestion.
• More black gesso showing through the darkest parts.
• More variety, overall.

Dorian - 03/04/17

Overall, I am pleased. The face shape is better, but the tilt of the face is off. While this did not fulfill all of my goals, it felt like I was going in a different or new direction, which is hard. It's especially hard for me to suggest. I struggle with wanting to define. The ear on the left could use a little work, but I am going to leave it. It was a good attempt at a suggestion, but where the ear connects to the rest could be grounded to the rest of the face a bit more.  

The next time I paint something other than a tree I might try to only use thumbprint type paint strokes. I tried to have more in this painting, but managed to cover most of them up. 

I've painted from this picture one other time and it helps me to compare to the earlier attempt.

Dorian - 11/29/16

Here is the picture. I love this picture. Dorian does not like having her picture taken. She usually scowls and/or turns away. As a kitten, I tried to take pictures of her with a flash too many times.  

Tree #2

Wow. I may have to paint a lot of trees. It is so, so much fun. This time, I tried to go with a "thumbprint" type of paint stroke all oriented up and down and did not overlap colors as much as yesterday.

It's been extremely helpful to go back and revisit negative space. With these types of paint strokes and with the negative space, the edges between the tree and background are more suggested and less defined. Is this what is meant by having hard edges and soft edges?  I'm not sure, but these edges look very different from what I usually do. I mostly define edges with a hard, directional paint stroke that screams "hey, look at me. I'm an edge". That is not necessarily bad, but having variety is better. For awhile, I want to keep playing with this loose tree style to get this type of edge drilled into my brain.

As a point of reference, this is one of my favorite paintings. While there are fun blocky paint strokes in this painting, all of the edges between Chandler and the background are definite, hard and unyielding.

Seeing Trees

I am thinking about playing around with negative space trees as a way to have time to paint, while I'm taking an on-line class. Yesterday morning, I had a dentist appointment and another appointment after that. As I was driving around, I kept noticing the shapes of different trees and the direction and shape of their branches. I only looked at the trees when I was at a stoplight, because they were so distracting. It made otherwise, ordinary driving around town fascinating!

I also sketched a few of them, since I was early for both appointments.

Finally, here is a negative space tree. It was fun and relaxing to do. Expect to see a lot more trees out of me. I want to work on mixing colors, controlling values, and making varied and different paint strokes.  It's a perfect way to do all three without a lot of fuss or prep.

Not Folding Chairs

I could use some more folding chairs in my life. This morning, I was early for my dentist appointment, but they were running late, so I tried drawing a couple of chairs in the lobby.

 My chairs still wobble, but they are getting better, especially since I did not use a viewfinder.

Creativity And Me - Part 2

I'm feeling the need to revisit the idea of creativity and me  These days when I talk about drawing and painting, more times than I'd like I get the comment that somehow it's because I am creative as though it was some magical gift given to me. While it's not the intention, I almost feel a bit dismissed by that type of comment.

For years, I did not see myself as creative in any way. One day, well into adulthood, it occurred to me that solving problems in an inventive, innovative or original way was one way of exercising creativity.  It also was strongly linked with my job. At the time and still today, my work frequently involves looking at the present state, the needed state, the problem, and the available resources. Figuring out the an effective way to solve a problem is creativity in action. This was my first small, crucial step in deciding that I was creative.

My early and continued muse for creativity has been Kristin Nicholas. In this earlier post, one of the things that I talked about was the kits for small projects, such as gloves, mittens, or hats that she created when she was Creative Director at Classic Elite yarns. The kits gave you a pattern to follow, although there usually were several options, and beautiful yarn in yummy colors. The rest of the decisions, as to colors, motifs, and so on, were left to you. This link includes a picture of a postcard that accompanied the mitten pattern. It gives you an idea of the individuality that was encouraged. I'm not sure that I realized at the time how perfect this was. It allowed me to flex my creative muscles within a set limitations.

I also appreciate the limitations that I picked up from Kat Corrigan. First off, she is an incredible teacher with both knowledge and joy that she freely shares in her classes. One limitation of the best limitations that I picked up in class was only using five paint colors on the palette. Everything I've done in acrylic has come from just five colors. Without this, my guess is that I would have burned up countless hours trying to find the the "perfect" colors. Instead, I make my own. Fewer choices has been freeing and it's a good challenge to figure out what I can do with what I have. (Smile). This is a good philosophy for life!

I think the limitations are key. I think there are a number of people who see creativity as making something out of nothing. While that may happen, I think creativity mostly comes into play (literally) in an environment of limitations. You walk up to each limitation, push on it to see if you can move it or flex it and see what happens. Your response is creativity. It can happen at work, in the kitchen, on the easel, anywhere.

On Tuesday the meeting topic for my Toastmaster's group was creativity. That's part of the reason for this post. As part of preparing for the meeting, I found this Forbes article. When Carol Marine talks about doing 500 paintings that's the same as talking about the craft side of figuring out an artistic skill. I also liked this one from the Harvard Business Review. In my mind it address some of the downside of not recognizing or accepting one's creativity.

Partial Outdoor Sketch

If it looks like a bunch of weird shapes coming together in no particular way, yup, it is. That's the McNamara Center on the University of Minnesota campus. My view was from the west and I didn't have a full view of the building. I also did not have time to put in windows, doors or any other features.

Since I'm just practicing, I probably should stick with easier buildings, which are mostly rectangular. What can I say? It caught my eye. I had a few minutes, so I gave it a try.

Ella In Repose

This is my lovely cat, Ella. She was facing a window where the sunlight was pouring in, making some interesting shadows on her right side.

Cheerleader:

• I like the drama of the lights and darks and that I left the black gesso showing through on one entire side. 
• The painting also "reads" as Ella to me. 

Editor:

• While it's been wonderful to be painting, I haven't been pleased with my paint strokes. These aren't too bad, since Ella is a very sleek cat. Even so, I could use some more feathery strokes for the tufts coming out of her ears. I've been paying more attention to shapes and my paint strokes are a bit too exact and "blocky" in capturing the exact shape. I'd like to be lighter and suggest more.

Having time to paint is going to become difficult. While I was tempted to sign up for the next sessions of Kat's painting classes, I was going to miss too many of them. Instead, I signed up for Sketchbook Skool's class called Seeing. Starting Monday and for the next 6 weeks, I expect to be sketching a lot. If I have limited time to paint, I may try to do 3 or so negative space trees each week. There's very little set up. I can play with mixing colors and also with paint strokes. Plus, they are fun to do.