A Different State Fair Experience

I took a class on Thursday night about "Drawing the Uncooperative Model" by a really good sketch and overall artist. I walked away with a lot of notes and things to consider. On Friday, I did the follow up class, which was drawing at the Minnesota State Fair with the same artist. Both sessions were over my head. I thought they would be, but the reality of it was way more than I expected.

On the plus side, I came away with a lot of information. Plus, I worked my way towards figuring out how to apply what I can now and save the rest for later. On the not-as-positive side, yesterday, the sketching part at the fair did not go well for me and I was more of less ignored by the instructor. The instructor said he’d drift by and check in with people from time to time. He didn’t. Instead, I sought him out once and asked for help. In those several minutes, he shared a good foundation skill, but after that I was pretty much left to me own devices. I wasn’t expecting intense hand-holding or one-on-one, detailed, instruction, but was really disappointed that he didn’t do what he said he was going to do, especially since it was a small group. After 2.5 hours of a 4 hour class, I went off and did my own thing.

So for the good stuff. From Thursday night's session, I walked away with a good way to work on value shapes and structures. I purchased a sketchbook with  gray toned paper and several Pitt artist pens, the big brush kind, in black, warm grey, cool grey, and white. The Pitt pens are nifty. You can put down one layer of color in one of the greys. After it dries, which is quick, you can put down another layer of color, which is darker. It's a quick way to build value shapes in somewhere between 3 - 5 gradations of values. Plus, the toned paper acts as one of your value ranges. That means you use the white pen to just add those splashes of the lightest light. This also helps me since I have a bad habit of drawing over my lightest lights when I am drawing on white paper. After I work on the following, I think I will practice with simple objects at home where I can influence the lighting and working my way to more difficult ones.

The other idea which clicked and made sense is to try and see objects as a collection of geometric shapes. It’s not a completely new concept to me. I’ve read about it, but it didn’t make as much sense as when I saw a live example of it. There's something about seeing what the artist is seeing and watching what the artist is doing to really help make certain connections. The sketchbook guy, briefly, walked me through seeing a person as a series of geometric objects that are pieced together and how you can build upon that. We were sitting on bleachers and looking at a person from the back. When I looked at people from the back, I could see some of the same shapes in other people, but I couldn't transfer it when people were in a different position. Still, it made sense in that one moment and I could see it. That’s enough for me to slow down and figure it out in my own time and manner.

With the wonder of a Google search, I found this example, which brought additional clarity. Viola! In the reboot of daily drawing, I am going to start looking at objects and drawing their shapes, roughly, using geometric shapes. I started this morning using some of the pictures in the linked example. Here are some of them.

Hopefully, this will me get out of the details and out of the weeds. Right now, I literally cannot see the big picture and cannot filter out the unnecessary. I just can't do it, yet. I keep bumping up against this problem without really recognizing it or knowing what to do about it. Now, I feel like I have some options and, if I practice, I expect to make progress. 

I want to work on the drawing things from pictures or life using geometric shapes for awhile. Next up, I could see starting with the geometric shapes in a lighter medium like pencil or a gray pen and adding truer contour lines and a few details in pen and just building off of that. After awhile, I could see using the toned paper and Pitt pens to try and capture the large shapes, but more from a value perspective. 

State Fair Entries

It was a good year.

It's easier to take a picture of a first place entry versus a second place entry, plus the lighting in the display case for blue ribbon items is better than the other display case.

My scarf was from a pattern called Fox Paws.  Since the designer came and taught the techniques at Yarnover this year, I thought there would be a lot of versions of this pattern.  I only saw two, mine in heavyweight yarn and another one in fingering weight yarn. My other entry used the same techniques, stacked increases and stacked decreases.

Robin's The Name

Butterfly pictures are the game.

The past several years, I have planted a row of flowers for the butterflies and bees back by the alley.  I am filled with joy whenever I am back there and see these creatures enjoying the flowers I grew for them.  There's been a lot of joy the past several weeks.  Not so many pictures until today, but a lot of joy.

The monarchs especially love the huge Mexican sunflower plant, also called Torch.  Occasionally, they will stop by a zinnia.  The bees love them all.  The other butterflies / moths seem to like the zinnias better.

One Of My Favorite Models

I've been dabbling a bit here and there. As part of that, last night, I picked up a pen and drew my tea kettle. It released or unlocked something and I think my hiatus is over.

I started this last night and finished it today.

#345 - Dorian Gray - 6" x 6" - paper

Dorian has always been one of my favorite models, although it is hard to get a decent picture of her. I used the flash too many times when she was a kitten, so she looks down or away when I have a camera.  I'm always very happy to have a good photo of her that I can use to paint.

Given that I feel very, very rusty, I am pleased that this really does look like her.

Paint Strokes

Hello, there. It's been awhile. Since I have a lot of new hummingbird pictures, I painted from one of the new ones.

#344 - 2019 Cabin Hummingbird

I'm back to feeling lost when it comes to painting backgrounds. The background for this one was originally a darker, duller red. I changed it since I didn't like it. 

I've been picking up my paint brush here and there and one frustration has been with paint strokes. To remove the barriers to just paint something, I decided to draw out some simple shapes in a pattern and practice filling them in. It worked well, since it gave me more than one try to fill in a shape.

While doing this, I found myself slowing down and thinking about the edges of the paint brush and how to best use them.  I have busy week, so I might practice with this a bit more.

Cabin Weekend

Not only have I been away from this blog, I have been away. This past weekend was the one where I spend time at a friend's family cabin. This year, there were 14 of us. It's always one of my favorite weekends of the entire year.

While I spent a lot of time with my spouse and friends, I also spent a significant amount of time with the hummingbirds. In fact, I went a little crazy photographing them.

I experimented with using a tripod and also just holding the camera. I took pictures from inside and outside. This one was without any zoom, so it shows the distance when I was shooting from the inside. The feeder is barely visible. I wasn't much closer when I was outside, since I didn't want to spook them.

I probably took 175 pictures of just the hummingbirds. Hurrah for digital cameras! Many of the pictures were blurry or were of an empty feeder. While I love my camera, it is not the best for taking sharp photos of fast-moving objects.

Cropping is the only change I did to any of the pictures in this post. This one is my absolute favorite. I'll call him Hamlet (to drink or not to drink - - that is the question).

Here are some other seated hummingbird pictures.

When I was outside, it became a game to try and see where the hummingbird(s) would perch before they approached the feeder. I tried to get a good picture of one of the perches, but it was too hard.

Still, I like the difference in the expression in these two pictures. There was a branch/stick that they perched on (until I figured this out and they started perching elsewhere). The background is a tent, since the cabin could not quite fit 14 people. I didn't crop these, so they are at full zoom.

After they stopped perching on the stick, I noticed that they would perch on the power line. While this is not a great photo, it shows just how small they are. The power line looks like some humongous cable, when it's just a power line.

I also saw some skirmishes where one hummingbird would chase off others.

Last, but certainly not least in the hummingbird department, I got some good in-flight pictures. Finally, since I was not successful the previous two years. It turns out all I needed to do was spend oodles and oodles of time obsessively devoted to picture-taking. This was the first decent one.

After that, my luck seemed to increase and I got some others.

I did get some other wildlife pictures. There was a nesting pair of osprey. This year's offspring either fell out of the nest or had recently fledged. On the second to last day we were there, the offspring were on the ground. There were three of them.  The next day, we only saw two of them and they still weren't flying. Plus, it had rained. There were also several dead fish, which the parents must have brought. The parents were either hanging out on the nearby telephone poles or they were flying around. When they were in flight, they were joined by other osprey, since we saw up to 5 adult-sized birds flying.

Here is one of the youth on the ground. I like the different greens and textures in the foreground and background.

Here is the best soaring picture - - another very hard picture to take with my camera (since I'm also not great at tracking over distance).

On the last day right before we left, my spouse and I went down to the dock to say "goodbye" to the lake. We were rewarded. It was windy so the lake had waves. Still, we saw mom and 6 babies straight out from the dock. They aren't loons, but I am not sure what they are. Our friend thought maybe red-necked grebes. I looked up a picture and I'm not sure.

Now that I'm home, I was thinking about hanging up a hummingbird feeder, here. I might. I might not. I'm a little afraid that if I do, I won't get anything done around the house or gardens ever, other than trying to take more hummingbird pictures.

By the way if any of my friends are interested in painting from any of these, please do! I am going to, after I do a few practice paintings of cats or something more familiar.

Levitating Cat

This ends a very, very long break from my blog. Wow.  Habits are easy to keep when you keep them going and hard to start back up when you don't.  My hiatus started right before I left on vacation (juggling convention in Fort Wayne IN with a stop in Milwaukee for several days before the convention started - - thanks for asking).  Since returning, I have not been good about carving out time to draw and paint (or blog) for various reasons.  The most recent excuse is a delicious one.  The black raspberries in my yard are blessing me with abundance.  I'm spending around 30 - 45 minutes each day harvesting.  Most of them are going into the freezer to enjoy throughout the rest of the year.

The first day back from vacation was for laundry and other type of re-entry-related tasks. Plus, I started this painting. It's the second try of one of my last paintings.  I love how this cat's paws just spill over the side of the bunk bed.  There is an ease in how cats use their bodies which fascinates me.  Maybe, I should take some pictures that aren't so focused on the face, but rather the cat's overall pose, and try to paint from those.  It would be a good excuse to work in a more rectangular format and to try to build volume and shapes with paint.

I like the start and, in truth, am afraid of messing it up.  Silly, I know.  It's just on paper.  I can (and will) always paint another one.  I will finish this soon.  Until that point, meet the levitating cat.  I left more black gesso peeking through the body of the cat, but in truth, it could use even more.

Two nights ago, just to pick up a paint brush, I spent several minutes and painted two color wheels. For one I used the greener shade of blue.  In the other, I used the redder shade of blue. I only used one layer of color and am pleased with the coverage/opaqueness in the yellows, oranges, and reds.