Don't Mind the Arrow

Able Was I Ere I Saw Elba

It's not very creative as a title, I know, but the location for the Virtual Paintout this month is the Italian island of Elba. I haven't participated in the project for a few months, in spite of missing some great locations - last month was Summit County, Colorado, and before that was Eureka, California.

But I managed to get one done for this month. And as always, I had a lot of fun touring around the location scoping out potential places to draw. It made me think a lot about the practicalities of island living. In some ways, it seems great, but I'm pretty sure I couldn't hack it for very long.

Maybe I don't see myself living there, but hanging out under one of those umbrellas for a while doesn't seem so bad!

I've Been Away

My world simultaneously expanded and contracted with the launch of Google+. Contracted in the sense that I'm spending about 95% of my online time there and expanded in the sense that I follow over 700 people there and have found a wealth of inspiration and interaction. 

I've been doing a lot of art and photography and posting it all there (publicly, so if you want to see it, you can, whether you're signed up or not: my profile). One of the projects I've been doing is Alphabeasts, in which you draw a mythical/fictional beast for each letter of the alphabet, due each Monday. The results are then posted on a tumblr blog for everyone to enjoy. This week we're on "E," and this was my submission.

From Alphabeasts

Anyone who might be interested in joining in, never fear that you've missed the first 5 - late entrants are more than welcome, and the blog has a link outlining how to participate.

It's been hard to drag myself away to update this blog and to read other people's blogs, but I'm hoping to figure out how to manage it all soon.

What To Draw?

I found myself wondering that, just feeling like I wanted to practice but I had no clue what to use as a subject. And then I thought, "hey, isn't that the whole point of Everyday Matters?" So I went and pulled a prompt out of the much-disused container and sat down to draw.

Here's what I ended up with. I was originally going to pull the one out of the fridge, but I was glad to see we had an empty one in the recycling bin. With my luck, I would have bumped it and ended up with eggs all over the floor. 

In other news, I've finally figured out what I'm going to do for the Sketchbook Project. Still a lot of planning to go into it, but I've got the concept finalized at least. Four months to make it happen. I can do it!

The Perfect Pen

Last time, I promised I would write about the amazing pen I discovered.  I know everyone struggles to a certain extent to find the pen that really works with their style (aside from the lucky few who can pick up anything from a fountain pen to a ballpoint to a Sharpie and work magic), and I'm no different. One of my issues was that although I love the Micron pens, I tend to flatten the point and then they don't flow nicely (holding them at an angle once that's happened leads to uneven ink flow). Ditton with the ultra-fine Sharpies (plus, those bleed through worse than most other pens). It even happened with my Pitt pens, which I liked a lot otherwise. I've resigned myself to only really using the brush tips with Pitt.

And then, on a whim, I picked up a rollerball gel pen. I've never tried to use them for drawing, really, although there are a few I've liked for writing. I came home, tried it out, and ... it was perfect. Flowy, with deep black ink. No skipping or unevenness in the ink. Heaven.

I've done a few different drawings with it that I'll be sharing, but here is one for now. I was trying out a new, looser style and I think the pen really helped me accomplish what I set out to do. What do you think?

 

It's Been a While...

In fact, it's been long enough that I hadn't even signed in to Typepad on my new computer that I bought a week and a half ago. Yikes.

It's not like I haven't thought about the blog, or been doing anything art-related, because I've done both. But somehow I was always busy actually doing things instead of blogging about them. I've participated a few times in group drawing challenges on Google+, and I've found it surprisingly fun to get out of my comfort zone and try more cartoonish/illustrator-like styles of drawing.

That one was for a challenge called "Ways Penguins Fly." The next one was to make a drawing of your element and Chinese zodiac animal. I was born in the year of the Metal Pig.

I have so much more to post about, but I'm going to leave it at that for now because I don't want to have this one just run on and on. Next time, though, I'm going to talk about a new pen I bought that I absolutely fell in love with.

Another One From the Ranch

 

One morning when Morgan was in town, I sat out on the porch at the ranch and drew. It was just me and the various wildlife. The only sounds were the chickens, hummingbirds, and various rustles from lizards or rodents through the plants. The dog was quiet and pretty disinterested in what I was doing, luckily, because it would be hard to draw with her licking my leg the whole time.

From Sketchbook

It was a surprisingly challenging scene to draw; there were a number of different perspectives going on. I don't think I was entirely successful with a couple of things, but it doesn't really matter. I often tell Morgan, "well, that drawing just veered off from reality," but he usually just shrugs, and he's right. If I wanted an exact copy, I'd take a photo (or do a much more studied drawing). The point of a sketch is to capture the essence of the scene, and I think this manages to do it.

Sunday Image - Minimalism

Plants Galore

My husband and I spent the last week in California. We were too busy for me to have time to sketch while we were out and about, but I did manage a couple of drawings at his parents' ranch. I'm filing this drawing under "Urban Sketching" even though it's pretty far from urban.

The first one is with a finer pen and a little tighter than I've been trying to be recently. But I'm pretty pleased with it. Drawn with a brown Pitt pen in my sketchbook.

From Sketchbook

Plants aren't really my favorite things to draw - I just find them really challenging. I had to give it a shot though because Morgan's mom has plenty of plants! I was sitting out ther during the hottest part of the day, too, so that provided incentive to capture the scene as quickly as possible.

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

I was going to do this in reverse order, starting with the bad and the ugly. You know, the same way that when you have some good news and some bad news, most people want to start with the bad news. Finish strong. Instead, I'm going to start with the good and maybe you'll have lost interest by the time I get to the bad and ugly.

The Good

Sunday night, Morgan and I headed out to the Adams County Fair. Free admission! (Although they neglected to mention the $5 fee for parking.) We went near sunset so we could try to get some good photos of the rides. After we'd walked around for a bit, we sat on some rocks near the pony ride and I sketched the rides area. It was just a quick 5 or 10 minute sketch, but I'm pretty happy with how it captured the salient points. I got some good digital photos of the fair, too, and hopefully some interesting ones on film as well.

The Bad and the Ugly

I decided to try another watercolor, using a picture on Paint My Photo (thanks for the heads-up about this site, I'm looking forward to using more references from there and submitting some photos, too!). I'm trying to learn to loosen up with watercolors. Because "loose" is not my usual style in any media, I expect it will take some real effort to make it happen, if it can happen at all.

I'm not happy with this at all. Well, actually, there are a couple of things I like about it, but many, many more that I don't. I just remind myself that it wouldn't be practice if I were already good at it. I like the lamp, some of the shadows, and the sky is all right. Everything else, well - the less I say about it, the better.

Sunday Image - Swans