Easter at the Farm

Clan Speck had a gathering at the farm today. There were lots of people to see and lots of roast beast to eat. After my turn on dish detail I escaped outside to be where other people were not.

Curled up on the truck tailgate with my new Pentalic sketchbook and got to sketching. This is the garage of the farmhouse.



A niece came running up with something cupped in her hands. She opened them to reveal this little guy. He was about an inch and a half long:
Me: Oh, what a cute little frog!

Niece: *tsk* It's a TOAD! (eyeroll)

Eyerolling runs in the family apparently.

She put him on the tailgate for me to draw. He sat amazingly still while I sketched.

Niece (looking over my elbow while I'm sketching): Don't forget the breather bumps behind his eyes.

Me: Breather bump things...done!

How did she know those were breather bumps anyway???

I moved my perch from tailgate to overturned bucket to draw this stump hole in a pecan tree. A Virginia Creeper vine (or maybe poison oak) was growing from the hole. Those spiky grass-like plants are supposed to be iris.
The farm doggies like it when I sit on a bucket. I'm at their level and gets lots of *very* helpful slobbers while I'm drawing. Ewwww!

Childhood Treasures

I thought it would be a neat idea to do a series of all my treasures. The first one I wanted to paint was a seashell. I've moped around for four days now doing everything but painting that little seashell. I couldn't get motivated. I did other things, drew other stuff. Something just didn't feel right.

So today I gave up on the whole treasure series idea and started putting everything back in the treasure box. Then the monkey spoke to me (figuratively) and I sat down right then and drew and painted him and his buddies.

I guess the little seashell didn't want to be drawn or its story told. Sometimes that's just the way it goes.


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Process notes:
Painting has improved; composition has tanked. :(

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.

Who Let The Frogs Out