Happy Holidays!

 Happy holidays from Hammett and me.  

A few days ago, a dumped out a tub of my hats, gloves, and scarves on the bench in the kitchen.  Hammett immediately jumped on the pile and went to sleep. Later, I decided it was time for Hammett to hone his hat-modeling skills. I've continued to torture him in this way for the past few days.    

I've been gone from this blog for awhile and I also have not been drawing or painting.  I'm getting back to a place where I think I'll be starting up all of it again, shortly.  

Self Portrait

Back in January 2021, I started a self portrait project and I made a specific pamphlet for it. The goal is to draw one portrait per month and I’ve been trying to do that within the 1st week of the month to prevent procrastination. I’m a little late this month. It will take me 2 years to fill the pamphlet. 

At the beginning of the year, I was focusing more on faces and portraits, so one reason for this project was to see what changed over time from a drawing perspective. Although, currently, I have not been drawing faces. 

The other reason for this project is getting to know my own face in a different way. Most of the time, I’m on auto-pilot with respect to my face. When I look in the mirror there it is, but it’s changing, as I get older and my relationship to it also keeps changing. 

The thing I keep coming back to is that there’s been something deep and profound about having pictures of several people that I am biologically related to and it’s changed how I relate to my own face.

Postcard for Wet Paint

Wet Paint has a summer postcard project each year and also has a event at the end. One of the requirements is that you have to mail the postcard to them. It’s no fair dropping it off. 

I’ve been meaning to work on a piece for it and finally did today. 

Have I mentioned lately how much I love the Neocolor II crayons. When I was doing cat in hat portraits, I was mostly using them as crayons. Lately, I’ve been playing with them as though they were watercolors. 

Last Year’s Hummingbird

 I got together with a friend today and played around with my Neocolor IIs. The first thing I worked on was a very long warm up. Next, I started working on a hummingbird drawing from a picture I took last year. Since the hubby is off playing cribbage with this family this evening, I finished it up this evening.  

In this one, I used the Neos more as though they were watercolor. I’m not sure what to do with the background, so I’m leaving it as is.

I Was Gone And Now I’m Back

When I say I was gone, I mean that I was gone from my daily art practice. It’s hard to come back once I’ve lost the daily habit. The project approach has been a good one, but I think I need to define what it means to me so I can make it sustainable again.

I’ve been playing with gouache a bit, along with slowly working my way through Shari Blaukopf’s class about sketching skies in gouache. I both want to work through this class and play with gouache and also find myself avoiding it all at the same time.

While this makes me feel as though I’m flitting around too much and probably should decide on one thing to focus on, I also just gone done (about 5 minutes ago) taking with a short class from Wet Paint. It was about using the Caran D’Ache Neocolor II crayons. Up until now, I’ve just been using them as crayons. In this short, but very fun class we added water. In one excercise, we used them almost like watercolor and in the other exercise we used them more opaquely, but activated with some water. It was super fun.

I went too complicated for the subject matter for the first exercise. For the opaque one, I went with a simple apple. 

Drama in the Pine Tree

Yesterday, I was grousing to my spouse that I haven't felt like I have had the time to just sit and notice, lately. I am a little irked that the hummingbird feeder is out. I’ve filled it 4 times (we don't fill it very full) and I have yet to see a hummingbird. Last year, there was time to slow down and notice. It was one of the few gifts of the pandemic. For various reasons, the pace of life is picking up and I don’t want to give up the noticing, but it takes time and I haven't found the right balance. 

This morning, I went out start watering the flower and garden beds, but before I started I decided to sit and notice. 

In our 70 year-old pine tree outside the back door, I’ve been hearing loud, slightly annoying chirps and since there is an active cardinal’s nest and a robin’s nest, it was time to stop and look. The chirps were especially loud and shrill this morning. While it was hard to zero in on the exact location of where they were originating from, it was on the side of the tree where the cardinal’s nest is located.  

I spotted one and later a second baby cardinal in the tree. I think they are called fledglings at this stage. They blend in amazingly well when they aren’t moving. It’s hard to get a good picture. The little ones are starting to hope around the tree and, occasionally sort of jump/fly from one branch to a slightly farther one, which made me tense up whenever they did this. Many years ago, we saw a male cardinal tending to a fledgling on the ground under the same tree and I know these youngins have a much better chance of survival if they don't fall out of the tree. 

What wasn’t hard to see was the pair tending to them. They seem to be everywhere all at once, so it was not surprising that they both look skinny and a tad ragged. 

There was a certain level of drama with the various activities of the adult and young cardinals, which spiked to 16 on a 10 point scale when a squirrel tried to navigate its way through the pine tree near the fledglings. Until I talked to my neighbor this morning, I wasn't aware that squirrels will eat young birds. 

If you have ever seen small birds run off a big raptor in the air it was a bit like that, but it happened in the confines of the pine tree. The male cardinal sounded and kept up a distress call which brought the female, who also started yelling at the offender, and they more or less attacked and herded the uncooperative squirrel away from the fledglings. It was quite a sight to see and was very loud. Not long afterwards, a robin and another bird tried to land near the fledglings, so there was a repeated and very loud enforcement of a "no go" zone.  Later, subsequent violations of the "no go" zone (no stopping or standing here, just move along) were much less violent and loud. 

When things settled down a bit, it was time for a little food for the babes.

I am so glad that I took the time this morning to experience this and also to write about it. It leaves me in a place where I feel more rested and ready to face a busy day than when I first woke up. 

Hello There

 Hello to my blog. I’ve missed you. 

In my time away, I have kept up with daily project work and I completed Suhita Shirodkar’s class. It covered a lot of ground in 4 sessions. That is not a criticism, although the leap in the 4th class was more than I was willing to do, so I did my own thing and did not turn in homework to be evaluated. 

I still have a long way to go with tackling figure drawing. Here are a couple of attempts from Suhita’s class when we were working from photos. These are all fairly small drawings and the point is to try to capture people in a sketchy type of way, but where there is also aliveness and a sense of movement. I found that I could start to work some things out if I practiced drawing the same person more than once. By the third try, I thought I was getting more believable posture and "movement".

I am starting to develop a dislike of feet, since I just can’t make out their shape. 

The leap in class 4 which I was just not prepared to make was trying to sketch an entire market scene from one of 6 phots that she provided from a trip to Barcelona. It was just too hard to figure out what to include, modify, how to represent everything and so on, so I just didn’t do it. Instead, I did play around with trying to capture and fit in just the people relative to each other in some scenes as a way to push myself a bit. Here’s an example of that. 

While I think all of this has been good, I’ve really been hitting portraits and figure drawing a lot these past few months. It’s been good, but  truthfully it's starting to feel like work. Since I started a new job 4 weeks ago, I don't need more things which feel like work, since I am still in that stage where I am just plain tired a lot of the time, from getting up to speed on things. 

That means I need something that feels more like rainbows, unicorns, and cotton candy, so I’m diverting to something fun and not intense for now. I am trying a new medium for me, gouache.  I saw that Shari Blaukopf had an online class on painting scenes with skies in gouache and it seemed like a good way to learn about this medium. I signed up and bought supplies. 

Here’s the first attempt. I think my clouds and the hills in the background look a little flat, but this is a first attempt. 

I will get back to having more focus with defined projects at some point, but for now I just need some fun. Plus, I have some wonderful sunset pictures from my friend’s cabin and some other good sky pictures that I can explore after I’m done with this class. 

Takeoffs and Landings

Given that I have a gazillion pictures from yesterday at Crex Meadows Wildlife Area, I just have to post more.

Here are some takeoffs. 

Here are a couple of landings.

My dad was a hobby pilot and I spent a lot of time with him in a 4 seat airplane. From that time, the words "XXXX, you have been cleared for take off or XXXX, you have been cleared for landing" are seared in my memory.

Three Long Necks

Yesterday, I spent the day with a friend at Crex Meadows Wildlife Area in Grantsburg WI and took a gazillion pictures. When this was happening, I took as many as I could, so I think of them as a series. I have better, clear individual pictures, but this set draws me in. 

Maybe it's because of the closeness after all of the social distancing of the last 14 months. 

What I Have Been Up To Lately

Saturday was the first of 4 weeks of taking Suhita Shirodkar’s class called People Alive. The class is on Zoom and she is a well organized and good instructor. The first week is about capturing silhouettes and adding details with an emphasis on less being more. You would use these types of people in the back of a urban sketch. It’s a continuation on my overall project to work on figuring drawing. 

I only play with watercolor occasionally and it's been at least 12 months since I've picked them up, which has added some additional challenges. In Saturday's class, there were 3 building blocks to the overall concept we were learning, which means I can focus on one new building block for 2 days before moving on. This is the best example I have so far of a simple silhouette with some details added. Tomorrow's new concept is to work in more than one color.

Yes, it's an elderly couple leaning towards each other and walking together. 

The other thing I've been up to is tearing down paper for pamphlets and finishing several pamphlets.  Both of these are approximately 8” x 6” with one in "portrait mode” and one in “landscape mode”. Both contain Arches Text Wove paper. The covers were made from a full sheet of linen card stock paper. The texture mostly comes from several layers using bubble wrap. 

I don't think I've ever met a bright color combination that I don't like.

What To Keep and What Can Go

I went through a lot of my drawings and most of them went away in this morning's recycling. The sketchbooks and loose papers were starting to take up too much space and there was not a reason to keep most of them. This blog captures what I want to capture for the most part, since it’s good to be able to look back.

There is a difference in looking at a picture of what I created with my hands versus looking at the actual thing and because of that, the things I kept take me back to a place I wanted to go and want to be able to return to, for now. In making this determination, I kept the bar very high, so I did not keep much.

Since both of my gray cats are gone, I kept some of the drawings of them. I also have kept the very first painting I ever did of a cat and Ella was my subject. It’s not very good, but it was the best I could do at the time and it makes me smile when I look at it. I posted about it here.

This is one of drawings that I kept. It goes back all the way to July 2017, so it was about 1 1/2 years into the drawing and painting journey. I posted about it here. It's a small, simple drawing, but it brings back very good memories. 

One Last One

Here's the last one for Art 4 Shelter. I decided to paint from one of my recent bird pictures. 

Trumpeter Swan - Crex Meadows Wildlife Area 

Have I mentioned lately how much I love the Neocolor II crayons?

More Bird Pictures

Yesterday, I ventured out to Crex Meadows State Wildlife Area in Grantsburg Wisconsin with a friend to take bird photos. I got the chance to practice taking pictures of birds in flight. Obviously, I still need more practice since I barely captured either of these birds before they flew out of the frame.

These are the only photos I editing by cropping them. They looked slightly less ridiculous with some of the blank sky removed on the top, bottom and to the left of both birds. Although I will say that both photos do convey a sense of movement.

In truth, I did have a number of inflight pictures turn out and here are several of my favorites. 

We were not trying to disturb any of the birds and were always a fair distance away, so the 60x zoom camera was much needed. Even so, there were a bunch of times that we saw trumpeter swans in flight. The first time, I was looking to the south at a pair of sandhill cranes and I heard the movement of air behind me. It didn't sound like the wind and the sound wasn't that close, but the sound made me turn around to see a couple of trumpeter swans flying behind me. They flew in a large circle around and to the front of us. 

I took about 400 pictures yesterday. I am showing great restraint by not including a lot more of them.

I can't help myself. I have to point out that this next photo was post-coitus.

While there were also raptors, ducks, loons, and other birds, the swan pictures turned out the best overall. 

Urgh, Urgh, and URGH!!!

My April art project is to do a little prep work related to gestural figure drawing, so I can try to do 100 people in 5 (or 7 days) in May.  This has been a one-week challenge by some urban sketchers and I decided to use this idea as a way to push myself, but in my own timeframe since they did it in March. Their timing did not work for me given the pandemic, the weather here in March, and my skill level. 

I’ve been doing a lot of prep work and have been looking at the pages related to gesture drawing in the book “Figure Drawing Design and Invention” by Michael Hampton, looking at some videos on Proko.com and Artprof.org and finally working through a Craftsy class by Suhita Shirodkar.  

I purchased this Craftsy class and a lot of others in the past and I have never worked through them. For a long time I had this weird hang up that time spent on drawing or painting should be focused on the active doing part. That never left enough time for learning, unless I was taking a scheduled class.  The internal critic is a sneaky bastard which has a bunch of different ways to try and derail progress.  Things are going much better now that I frequently split up my art-making time between learning and doing.

In this Craftsy class, I just rewatched a video of how to quickly capture a gestural sketch of someone walking towards you. I had to stop the video, stand up, and, slowly, exaggerate the process of walking to have the placement of the shoulders, hips (especially the hips), and the front and back legs make sense with how the instructor drew them.  When I was doing this, it made sense, but I know I am going to have to go back and do this slow exaggerated walking a bunch more times to create the body awareness that will make it easier to actually see.

It’s both funny and extremely aggravating that I have to work so hard:

1. to see what is happening when I am trying very hard to look, and 
2. to recreate it in my own body when I’ve been walking around my whole life.

It’s kind of annoying to realize how little body awareness I have and to also have my brain go on overload when I am trying to process what’s happening in a video of someone walking at a normal speed towards me.  

Also, I’m finding it hard to be gestural. I’ve mostly been doing loose outlines, when I’m trying to be gestural.  I am barely starting to understand how to get more gestural and am very slowly making progress.

All of this may sound negative, but the flip side is that I am thrilled with deciding what I want to learn and pushing myself to do it. 

More About The Blanket

It turns out that I started this project on February 28, 2015. The overall blanket is 8 squares by 10 squares and, according to my notes in Ravelry, I finished the squares on April 12, 2015. Although I did pull the squares out to work in ends from time to time, this project sat untouched for the past 4 years.

As I was making progress on it, I thought that it would be nice to complete it in time for my second vaccine. I felt crummy for about 24 hours after my first shot, including feeling very cold at times. Assuming that same will happen with the second one, I thought it would be nice to have the new blanket.  I did not set it as a goal and I wasn't really pushing for that, since I make myself a bit crazy when I do. Although, somehow, the timing worked out so that I finished it last night and my shot is this afternoon, so maybe I'm just kidding myself that I didn't have a goal to finish.

So far, the blanket is a big hit with me and with the cats. The picture in the first post is Chandler, who jumped up on my lap last night right after I finished.

In these photos, Hammett is the cat model.

It's hard to get the entire thing in one picture, so here is most of it.

This is about half of it.

Here is most of the other half.

I really love it and I'm sort of fighting with myself at the moment. Occasionally, a project just does not end up being for me. This may sound a little strange, but I'll get this whisper that it's not mine. Sometimes it's clear who it is for, but most of the time it's not, initially.  I'm having a little of that with this one. I am going to use it and enjoy it post-vaccine and see what I think after that. I figure either the whisper will go away or it will get louder.

A Big Warm Hug

I finished the crocheted afghan blanket last night.  When it was done and I put it on my lap, it felt like a big warm hug. Even better, it attracted a cat.  More accurately, of course, it attracted a cat.

To counteract all of the ugliness taking place in my community, I wish I could offer a moment of peace and comfort to anyone who needs it.

The Universe Is Sending Good Opportunities My Way

Yesterday, the hubby and I took a walk down to the Mississippi river.  It was a relatively short walk, but we saw an eagle when we are on the Franklin Avenue bridge.  When we got down to the river, we saw several mallards and this little screech owl.  On the way home, we saw the neighborhood albino squirrel and we also stopped to see another neighbor's chickens.  

Today, a neighbor alerted me to a barred owl in Matthews Park, so I headed over and took several pictures.  As of last summer, I had never seen an owl in the wild before, so I am grateful for the opportunities that the universe has been sending my way.

(Added later in the afternoon) - - As the day has unfolded and as I became more aware of current events in Brooklyn Center and elsewhere in the metro, I debated a bit about whether I should remove or change this post.  I decided not to, since this was my experience and what I was feeling at the time that I posted it. 

Art 4 Shelter - The Cats In Knitted Hats Series

Today, I finished portrait #6 of a cat in a knitted hat and I think it might be the end of the cats in knitted hats project, at least for awhile or at least for Art 4 Shelter for this year. The first 3 were dropped off awhile ago, along with several other pieces. I will get the last 3 dropped off some time soon.

Although I posted about the project from the time it started back in January, I wanted one post where I can go back and look at all of them easily. Here they are in reverse order. The first two were 8" x 10".  The rest are 5" x 7".  

All of these, except for the first one were drawn from project photos on Ravelry. Looking up cats in knitted hats on Ravelry was a pleasant diversion during the pandemic and the people I reached out to kindly gave me permission to use their photos. I included each cat's name, even though the cats in question might have preferred to stay anonymous.

While it was fun working on these and I found that I adore the Neocolor crayons, it was also a good learning experience. I had to work on creating backgrounds, making minor to major adjustments from the source photos, and finally working a piece to completion. It also was a good challenge to mostly work on smaller pieces, since that's what Art 4 Shelter prefers.

Since I am adding some additional information to this post. I traded several messages with Sylvester's owner via Ravelry and it turns out that he was a rescue cat, actually a bottle-fed kitten rescued at 2 weeks old . It's nice that the (hoped for) sale of the art inspired by his cat-in-a-hat picture on Ravelry will support Simpson Housing Services in providing service to 1 person for 1 night at their shelter.  

#6 - Sylvester

#5 - Habibi

#4 - Kaki

#3 - Penny

#2 - Wolfie

Last, but not least, here is the cat who started it all. If Chandler was not such a sweetie and let me place my partially knitted brioche hat on top of his head and take a picture, none of this would have happened. Since that time, he has developed more sense and does not pose for hat-related pictures. 

#1 - Chandler