Who?

No, hoo-h'Hoo-hoo-hoo or at least that's what the internet says a great horned owl's call sounds like.  Yesterday a friend took another friend and I to see an owl's nest. Since the hubby is also interested in owls, I came home from my first outing and I left immediately with him to take him to see the owls. While I got good pictures during the first visit, the light was much better for the second visit. 

Here are my top pics. This experience made me so incredibly happy!

It's the same adult owl in the first 4 photos.

If you look at this one full screen, the very yellow eyes are more apparent.

I like the extreme turn of the owl’s head in this one.

I feel as though I am being judged by the owl and somehow not measuring up.

The other adult owl is in the photo below. It was hard to get a shot of this owl, both because it was easy to lose the owl in the trees and second because I kept getting pictures where a branch was across his eyes from the number of branches and/or the wind.

I'm still playing the same game with myself where I don't crop or edit my photos, even though the middle 3 would be even better if they were cropped.

There were people with some serious camera lenses, far beyond my lovely 60x zoom point and shoot. I'm sure they were getting even more incredible pics, but I am quite happy with my camera.

Figure Drawing

This month’s project is a bit of a hodge podge. I have some “clean up” from prior months that I want to complete and I want to do some pre-work at home, so that I can practice figure drawing, mostly gesture, out in the world in May. Gesture drawing has never made sense to me. From a thinking standpoint, I do have a basic understanding. From a doing standpoint, I have always felt that I’m flailing around on the page. That’s what I am trying to fix. 

I found a good book, Figure Drawing Design and Invention, and the first chapter is giving me ideas and tools to use. This is going to take a lot of practice, but at least I have an entry point. I did 2 pages of gesture drawings today, which sounds like a lot. It wasn’t.  I was drawing very large and going also using poses from a website.

Here is the 2nd page and the two on the left are a good start for day 1 of a new project. 

40 Minutes

I worked on this pair of eyes for 40 minutes. 

These are very much in the style of France Van Stone, a popular artist on Sktchy, since I am slowly working through her class on Sktchy Art School related to eyes. I did choose a different set of eyes to draw versus the ones she demonstrated.

I had a good “aha” moment yesterday both from the class video and and from this drawing, about translating from a 2-d picture to trying to suggest the 3-d-ness of how the eyes nest in the eye socket. It was a little like the nose “aha” moment from last month, although in truth I’ve gone back to struggling with noses again. One thing I keep learning is that this is not a straight path. Those “aha” moments are a big step forward, which are usually followed by several big steps back. Eventually, a bunch of things will coalesce. 

France’s finished portraits all have a high degree of shading and hatching, so eyes don’t like this don’t look so goofy and out of context. Her overall style is not for me, since I don’t have the patience, most of the time, to work at this level of detail. At the rate I work, it would take me days to finish one portrait. 

What is my style? What am I doing? What do I want to accomplish overall? No clue. I should put some more thought into this at some point. For now, it seems more like all learning is good learning. As I look ahead to my April project, it’s going to be a hodge podge, since there are a few loose ends from earlier projects and I also want to do some prep work for my May project. 

As March and my March project nears the end, I also completed the last of five Alun Armstrong portraits.

Just Watch This

This video (yes, it's from the UMN Medical School) is mesmerizing in the way it shows the beauty and importance of something made by hand.  While it's focused on pie, it also makes me think about all the  things I do or create with my hands.

It's worth the effort to get their pie. They make seriously good pie, but it can be hard to get since you either have to enter their lottery or go by the shop and stand in line to get it.  That's okay with me. Things made by hand with intention are special. 

It's Time

It's time to finish the granny square afghan that I started a long time ago. The squares, themselves, were finished 4 - 5 years ago. Several weeks ago, I went searching for them. I thought I had worked all the ends in, but discovered that 28 squares still needed to be done. Next up, I counted the squares that I had and was perplexed why there were 57 of them. I knew that I had finished all of the squares and that it would make a decent size cover for sitting around. I couldn't remember how many squares wide versus tall it would be, but 57 squares made no sense. After digging around a bit, I found the other zip lock bag which contained 23 squares. 80 squares, it is.  An afghan of 8 squares by 10 will work nicely.

I used Kristin's pattern for it and when it came time to sew it together, I went with her recommendation for that, as well. 

I started the final assembly last night while watching an episode of All Creatures Great and Small. I almost got the first strip sewn together and since I had a pretty great creature sitting on my lap at the time, I decided that he should model the first strip, since it looks like a scarf.

Hammett is enjoying a nap in the background, undisturbed on the foot stool behind Chandler.  Earlier in the evening, we  folded laundry and, of course, Hammett enjoys curling up on top of the nice, fresh, clean laundry.   

It's probably best that Chandler came into my life at this stage. If he was my cat when I was a child, I might have been tempted to try and dress him up for tea parties. When he's sitting on my lap at night, he's warm, cozy, and pretty tolerant, although it is clear that he is not smiling in either picture.  

You Would Think After Five Years I Would Remember

You would think after five years I would remember to stop mid-way through, step away, and view what I am working on from a distance, but I don't.  When I'm done, either with "the session" or on a piece, I will finally step away and take a look.  As a result, I get surprised by my own results.  

Up close, I thought the face and eyes were okay.  From a proper viewing distance, I am really pleased.

I keep saying it, but I love the Neocolor crayons and I also really enjoy layering. 

Practice, Practice, Practice

Today, I am practicing eyes.  For your viewing pleasure, here is one eye.  I bookmarked some photos in Sktchy where people had something interesting or distinctive about how their eye(s) appeared in the photo.

One, random, floating eye looks a bit goofy.  I haven’t completed my practice for the day, so I’m off to do more.