Birthday Flowers

Hubby bought me flowers for my birthday last week. Thought I should draw them before they whithered and died. They were looking a little crispy on the edges already.

He also got me a ribeye and a steak dinner. He brought home the ribeye to grill the night of my birthday, but I told him I had other plans. He took me out for a steak dinner that night. He cooked the ribeye three days later. His ribeye was better then the restaurant's version.

He bought me a fancy-pants fountain pen too. But he said it wasn't for my birthday but just because he loved me.

I love him realmuch.

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.

Iris!

SQUEEE!!! The purple iris are just about to bloom! It looks like there are lots of blooms this year.

Last year Cheezburger thought the fluttering petals were wonderful playthings and knocked them all down.

If he does it this year he's fixin' to be unwell. I'll see to it. (snarl)

Aunt Bee

Raena (who seems to be my muse lately) commented: "I am sure that if you wanted to sit and do a perfect painting, you could easily do it!"

I laughed and agreed with her at first, but then started wondering...

Could I? Could I really give up my illustrationist ways and do a realistic painting if I wanted to?

Thought I would give it a shot with "use THIS reference photo" challenge #10.


While I did forgo the thick, black ink lines and wild paint splotches I so dearly love, I don't think this qualifies as "realistic" and it's nowhere close to "perfect." Sorry Raena.

I really like how the bee turned out, but Oh!...(eye roll)...those petals belong in the dustbin. Gahhhh!

Purple Iris

Dug out a seldom used sketchbook and found an abandoned sketch of purple iris I had started using colored pencils. There were vague pencil outlines of petals and leaves and such, but only one petal had been colored.

I remember starting it but giving up on it early on because it was going to be too detailed for my patience quota. My intent was to do a piece of "fine art" and fine art just ain't my style it seems. Anyway, I thought I would play with it a little for practice with my new brush pen and waterbrush.

I inked the lines and started slopping paint without much thought. I had no idea what the shapes were supposed to be. It was drawn from a photo of the iris in my garden last year but the photo has long been deleted. So, I just happily flung paint and let it be whatever it wanted to be.

Flowers in November

Journaling says:

This was the 25th Annual Worldwide Sketchcrawl, but it was too cold and nasty for me.

Found these potted plants in the garden thriving in the cold gray of November. The pentas I planted back in May and ignored through the drought of summer and monsoons of autumn. They're still putting out blooms.

The other pot had seedlings coming up that I thought were weeds but they have sprouted little cockscomb blossoms. Wonder where those seeds came from?

The pentas are amazing little plants. When I forgot to water them they just kept on growing. They are a full sun plant but haven't been in the full sun since late August. The blooms are still gorgeous.

I think I'll buy more of them next year. Woot!

Graveside

Process notes:
I struggled with the composition of this one. I couldn't figure out where to put the people and ended up with lots of sky. Phooey. I considered fleshing out the figures more, or adding more people, but I thought it would make it go from bad to worse.

I painted in the sky first using wet-on-wet (which I hardly use in this journal) and realized no cloud in the sky tipped at a 45° angle. Sheesh, what was I thinking???? Painted the tree like a second-grader. Painted the tent and stuff under it, then took a frustration break.

When I came back to it I realized painting just the main subject matter and leaving the rest black and white was a cool effect. I wouldn't have come up with that on my own, dangit. Added a bit of shading to the figure and chairs and called it done.

Sometimes less is more. Must remember this.

A Visit to Sissy's House

Monday, Sept 7, 2009

Arrived about 5:00 pm and got the grand tour of the brand new "old farmhouse." I hadn't seen it since they moved in and gotten it decorated. Love, love, love the deep wraparound porch. Perfect for sitting out in the porch swing in the evening.

These huge morning glories came up as volunteers. Probably were in the flowerbeds of the old dairy farm homeplace.


Everywhere I looked there were huge clumps of surprise lilies. Lots and lots and lots of surprise lilies.

---

Tuesday, Sept. 8, 2009

Sissy's Brand New Old-Timey Stove

Went to bed at 9:30 last night so by 4:00 am I was done sleeping. Piddled around and ate breakfast before Sissy got up. We were both shocked.

Worked on Sissy's project which entailed tromping around in the swamp. Saw a critter hole with what I think were snake eggs.

Sissy sprayed me down with baby powder Off before we went. I ended up with that sickeningly sweet musty old lady smell because of it. Must remember to avoid powder products forever. I hate that smell.

Sissy made cabbage rolls for supper at my request. They were just like Mom's only better. Crashed at 9:30 pm again.

---

Wednesday, Sept. 9, 2009


Up before the rest of the household again. Opened all the windows and started drawing in the early morning quiet.

Went shopping with Sissy and scored six very expensive shirts for Hubby for under $100. Woot! Also found the Merrell clogs I've been wanting, but they were NOT on sale. :( Very expensive for our tight budget.

Lunch at Jason's Deli then the long three-hour drive home.

Hubby wanted smothered hamburger steak for supper. First time in 27 years he has requested this. Luckily I vaguely remembered how Mom made it. It came out OK I guess.

Figured out late that Chelsea probably has a UTI. Sigh. Trip to the vet early tomorrow morning.

Rosemary

I adore my mother-in-law with all my heart and think of her whenever I see this little sprig of rosemary.

The text should read "The *only* one of four I've managed to keep alive." I have a garden but not a green thumb. I forget to water the plants. The only reason this sprig is still perky is that Hubby empties Cheezburger the Porch Cat's water dish into the tub each morning.

Pink Hydrangea

(click on drawings to embiggen)

Lady in Red Hydrangea

Not your grandma's old-timey hydrangea....

The traditional hydrangea has dozens of these petals that make up a puff ball blossom. The Lady in Red blossom has a lacy center with only eight of these petals on the outer edge.

The lacecaps bloom pinkish-white in the spring and turn burgundy-rose as they mature. I discovered the petals actually turn themselves over and it's the underside that becomes burgundy.

The dark green leaves become reddish-purple in the fall and stems are dark red year round.

The bush is supposed to be only three feet tall at maturity, but mine is already at least four feet and growing taller and larger every day.


Here is the bush in full bloom in late May:




A close-up of the lacecap blossom:

Five Minute Garden Sketches

It's been a long time since I've drawn anything. This winter just wasn't conducive to creativity for some reason.

I've wanted to draw these three things for several weeks but I fell into the old perfection trap. If I couldn't draw them perfectly I wasn't going to even try. But I wasn't drawing anything at all and had to snap out of it.

I got the idea of doing five minute sketches to get over my drawing block. I set the egg timer on the porch and let the pen fly. I tried to capture the essence of the thing and not get too hung up on details. If a line was out of place, so what. I just added a few more to it.







Small square sketchbook
Watercolor added later.

Speckus Mussupacus

Speckus Mussupacus, a new variety of spiderwort recently discovered in Lower Arkansas.

Tiny Watercolor Doodles

Still experimenting with watercolors. I can't seem to reconcile myself to the fact watercolor paintings should have soft edges. I like black lines, really I do.

--------------------------------
each about 2" x 2" on copy paper
watercolors and Pigma Micron 005 pen

First Watercolor

(click to embiggen)
Aieeeehhhh! Paint and water everywhere! Too much paint then too much water then too much everything on the paper. I need a teacher!

I couldn't leave well enough alone. Went back and added a pale blue wash for a background. I think I messed it up.

Uvulan Violets

An unhappy digital attempt.

A quickie Sharpie sketch.

The backstory

Economy Flower