Catch-Up Day

Had a journal crisis three weeks ago where my journal came all from togetherness. The paper was weird in it too, the paints and inks were bleeding through. I have another sketchbook of the same brand and the paper doesn't bleed like that. I thought I could soldier on and work around the paper issues but then the binding threads snapped and the signatures starting falling out. Crap!

Ordered a new Hand*book journal but had to wait a week for delivery. It arrived last Friday and I've been furiously recreating old journal entries, creating journal entries for the waiting week, and drawing current daily entries too. Whew! That's a lot of work! I just finished Sunday's "Spaghetti & Eggs" tonight.

So today is my catch-up day. I'm actually drawing today's journal page today, not a week later. What a relief!

Just realized I still need to do *last* Sunday's journaling and get that posted. Grrrr....

The journal entry for today was going to be a portrait of Karen Blados in ink. My thought was to do a simple pencil layout then ink it with the brush pen. I got carried away and kept going. Oy. Gave her a big ol' long nose and huge crackhead irises. Not good.

I redrew the eyes three times and the nose twice then gave up and just scribbled around on it. Grrrr.... (Sorry Karen, I'm *not* posting this one!)

I think the problem was I got the eyes too far up on her head. Human eyes are actually right in the middle of the face from the top of the head to the chin but my brain keeps telling me they aren't. Shut up brain!

I can draw the different parts of the face OK, but really struggle getting them in the right places and in the correct relationship to each other. Practice, practice, practice I guess. Sometimes faces come out perfect and sometimes they're a mess. I need to figure out what I'm doing differently on the good ones and keep doing that!

After drawing for 2-3 hours today starting with the tedious plate of spaghetti and ending in frustration at my inability at portraiture, I wanted to draw something quick, easy, brainless and sketchy-sketchy. I opted for azalea blooms.

I pruned the azaleas today. The blooms are all but gone and they were getting leggy. This is the first time they've been pruned since planting four years ago. Hopefully they'll be bushier next year.

I've never studied these blooms up close before. They look pale pink from a distance but have an explosion of color and "sparkles" from the center. I really needed the paint color "Opera" to capture the vivid, intense center.

In not-art related events, I crossed off one more item from my long-standing to-do list - culled and emptied two banker's boxes of old project files. One garbage bag to the burn pile, one to newspaper recycling. Two more boxes out of my workspace, Yay!

Made a slow-cook pot roast for supper - six hours simmering on the stovetop. I love pot roast days. For one, it's an easy meal. Two, the house smells heavenly like home cookin' all day. Unfortunately it smells like onions all night and the next day. Ugh.