Getting Back To Normal

I seem to be bouncing between two states - hyper-busy (i.e. feeling more like a human doing rather than a human being) or completely lazy and/or unmotivated. It's a bit disorienting. Although, I think it's part of getting back to things being more normal. My honey is recovering quite well and I have the first draft of our taxes done, so I guess it's time for some additional normalcy.

From an art perspective, I am painting on more days than not. I've been working from this picture I took in Connecticut last summer. The tree is magnificent. I cropped it down for a 5" x 7" and an 8" x 10". 

I got lost in the 5" x 7" and abandon it. I tried again with an 8" x 10". While I went further, I didn't finish this one either. I started on the tree with the trunk and the darkest values in the leaves. I got overwhelmed, since I don't know how to represent what I am seeing, plus I also had trouble mixing my greens. It was worth it to try and I'll loop back to this picture when my skills are stronger. The person turned out okay. There are actually two people in the picture, but I edited out the second person who was mostly hidden.  

#318 - Comforting Tree - 8" x 10" - paper - unfinished

On the drawing front, I've been procrastinating for a long time. I will start in a direction and abandon it, until I start in another direction. Today, I did something that I've been meaning to do and which I really should do. I want to work on capturing the big pieces or chunks in a drawing, as part of training my eye better and learning to address the big picture before straying into the details. It's territory which actually scares me a bit, but in a good way.

Today, each time I fed the cats, I went onto Sktchy and tried to draw a rough outline and big shapes of some of the faces I've bookmarked. You can see lines showing through from drawings on the other side of the paper, but you get the idea. I'm using a lead holder which holds a soft 5.6mm piece of soft graphite, so I can't get into the details. Here are two of today's drawings.

 It was fun and gave me a different way to think about faces.  The cats get fed 4 times per day, so this gave me several small chunks of time to draw. Each time, my brain was tired by the time the cats were done eating. All and all this worked out well.