Wingnut, Again

I revisit pictures that I've painted from in the past. I think this is the third attempt for this one. He is a beautiful cat with huge eyes. The face shape is not quite right. Next time I paint him, I will use a different reference photo.

Nature Shot

I have a friend who takes beautiful wildlife pictures in the local areas, including the Minnesota Valley National Wildlife Refuge. He's given me permission to paint from them, if I want! This one was taken on the grounds of a local university.

The colors were tricky to do and I don't think I have them. Cedar waxwings are so beautiful!

Practice Sketch From Inside A Car

For the online Craftsy class, I am taking the current exercise is to do a several, quick five minute sketches of buildings. The focus is more of a "planning" sketch, rather than a full sketch. Here is today's attempt. I added a few more details, but certainly did not finish the sketch.

I did a better job of figuring out the outside dimensions and I'm glad that I did. First, I measured the of the front corner of the building and used that to figure out my total width. The ratio was 1:4. At first, this looked way, way too wide on paper, so I measured it again. Yes, the ratio was in fact 1:4. Silly lying eyes.

It Took Time To Get To A Good Place

Here is one for Art 4 Shelter. It took a lot of paint strokes to get it to this place.

For a long time, I thought my paintings looked better close up rather than from across the room. Lately, it's been the opposite, which is probably a better place to be. Hopefully, it means that I'm improving on getting a better range of values.

By the way, the picture below is the one that I originally posted. It was taken at night with no natural light. I decided to take one with indirect natural light this morning. That one is above. What a difference it makes in the colors!

What Happens When You Carry A Sketchbook With You

The Huffington Post article titled "9 Things That Happen When You Carry A Sketchbook With You Nonstop" was mentioned on Sketchbook Skool's Facebook page.  I read it and liked it.

Also, in that spirit, I was in a meeting this morning.  It wasn't a bad meeting. In fact, it covered some good material on the proper classification of independent contractors and employees and what can happen if you do this incorrectly. In some of the less interesting parts of the meeting, my attention was pulled in the direction of a folding chair located across the room.  Rather than pull out the sketchbook in my work bag, I used regular paper in my notebook.

folding chair scribbles - 02/23/17

The one in the lower left hand corner is getting there, especially since I could not measure anything or check angles. I was in a room filled with finance professionals. Most of them would not understand. I did use the eraser a lot.

I will continue to draw folding chairs, when the opportunity presents itself, until I have done a better job of figuring out how the pieces come together.  The angles are crazy. The square ellipse formed by the seat is challenging. Is that even a thing?  Can an ellipse be a square?  Ah, the mysteries of the humble folding chair.

What To Do With The Blues

The sky was amazing late in the afternoon on Tuesday. I was driving to a northern suburb and the clouds had all sorts of different textures. Plus, the clouds were dramatically colored from a medium warm gray to bright white. The blue sky peeked out here and there. The different shades of blue were quite varied. I caught myself thinking about brush strokes for the clouds and what color to use to capture the different shades of blue.

Since I struggle a bit figuring out what color to paint the sky and water, I decided to play with my blues. Last night, I experimented with the two blues in my palette, phthalo blue green shade (GS) and phthalo blue red shade (RS), To get the lighter versions, I used titanium white. On the left is the GS. On the right is the RS. In the middle, I mixed the two. Since it seemed like the RS is "stronger", I tried to mix in a bit more of the GS. Who knows what the final proportions were in the mix.

If I remember the sky correctly, I think it was the color of the mixed shade along with something in between the mixed shade and the RS. This was a good experiment. On the palette, the RS just doesn't look like it should be for the sky, but the GS by itself, not surprisingly, is a little too green for the sky.

Pencil Sighting

I've been slowly watching a Craftsy class called Sketching Essentials In Graphite. It's a beginner class and it's really good. The instructor is a teacher and it shows in how he is able to explain concepts. I watch the class in short snippets, mostly when it's my turn to feed the cats. The cats have to be monitored and one of the older cats needs to be fed often, so there are four scheduled feedings per day. During the two (or three, if I fit in an extra meal for the one cat) that I do, I've figured out that watching a class fills the time well.

So far, the class has gone through the process of planning a simple outdoor sketch of a building. After watching the chapter on seeing and measuring, which included a good example of pencil sighting and sight sizing, I decided to try my neighbor's garage, which has an interesting shape. The problem was I forgot some of the approach and went for some of the details too soon. I re-watched part of the class and will select an easier building for the next try. The instructor suggested that we try 8 - 10 "planning" sketches and spending only 5 minutes or so on each one.

02/22/17 - neighborhood garage

Next time, I need to use a harder pencil at this stage. Something like a 2B or an HB. Also, I caught myself trying to use the pencil to measure in 3D rather than 2D. What I mean is that rather than measure both the front and side of the garage by holding my pencil flat in front of me (like the flat piece of paper that will be drawn upon), I caught myself cocking my wrist at somewhat of an angle. I think I've been doing this all along, but never realized it. This is hopefully part of the reason that my proportions are off.

This morning, during one of the cat feedings, I tried a quick sketch of the player piano.

02/21/17 - player piano

This sketch was on the last page of one of the cheap Artist Loft sketchpads that I use. This paper is fine for the level that I am at, although I do like the better paper in the sketch pad that I carry in my purse. This blog is for documentation purposes, so that I don't feel compelled to keep every scribble that I've ever made. The sketchpad is already in the recycling, but before I placed it there I buzzed through and took pictures of some of my favorites. Most of them have already been in a blog post, but it's still fun to revisit the favorites. I used this sketchbook from mid-November through today.

This first one was homework from painting class. It took a long time and it was hard to see and represent the different parts.

This is Ella, my little cat who needs all of the meals.  This was the first time that I captured a cat in a free-hand drawing. The outline was straight lines.

I like the accent lines, including the seeds, of the green pepper. 

This is another one of Ella. 

I like this can opener. When you feed cats four times a day, you use the can opener frequently. 

I also like this teapot. 

Lastly, here is a page where I started making straight lines and devolved into making different types of lines close together to play with creating texture. In the bottom right-hand corner, the blob looked like tree leaves to me, so I added a trunk.