Pencil Shavings

365 Days of Art - Day 109 - Bits and Pieces

I'm still recovering from "what ever this illness is" that I have, and had planned on going to bed early to keep fighting the good fight.  But here I am, instead, up in the middle of the night writing my blog.

I suspect this mini insomnia is because my husband is working tonight and I miss his grumbly, noisy, distracting, and so very comforting presence in the house.

This is what I was working on for Day 109 during my hour of art. I know it's hard to believe that I spent a whole hour working on a single eye and a nose, but I did.

The technique is called chairoscuro, drawing a subject in tones. Revealing it's dimensionality in only the light and dark tones.

The very best work in this technique looks like it actually lifts off the page.  I'm not quite there, but very nearly there in the nose that I worked on tonight.  I worked quite large, this sheete of toned pastel paper is 8x10 so the nose and eye are probably 4 times their normal size.  I thought the whole exercise was  a failure until I stepped back and saw that it wasn't as bad as I thought.  In fact it looks even better in the photo. 

Oddly enough I do a lot of my work in a semi-abstract form, so why am I working so hard on depicting things so realistically?  Because I believe that the better I get at drawing and "seeing" the better painter I will become no matter what "style" I represent in.

365 Days of Art - Day 107 - Great Big Birds

I stayed up very late on Saturday night working on my coloured pencil technique.

I rendered this Red-tailed hawk in coloured pencil on light gray  Artagain paper.

I am very happy with how this fellow came out.  So much better (and more nuanced) than the bluebird I did yesterday.

It was worth the lack of sleep to get it done.

Now that this cold is starting to make it's exit I am feeling like I am seeing better than I was, things are easier to focus on and, of course, my stamina levels are a lot higher so I can work for longer and not feel the pressure to get a lot done in a shorter time.

I don't know exactly how long this piece took, but I know that I was up long after the rest of the house was dark and the family was sleeping!

365 Days of Art - Day 105 - More Experiments

After my self portrait earlier in the week I sat down on Thursday and worked away for much more than an hour doing more faces in just black.  (I'm also experimenting with a thumbnail gallery below so you can see more than one image I worked on)

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I must be feeling better because I am getting really inspired to do more work.  I have some big ideas and I hope that once this cold is finished with me (I'm already more than ready to be finished with it) I can get to work on more abitious projects.

365 Days of Art - Day 102 - Cold and Flu Season

 I teased on Monday last week that I would be doing my hour of art rendering tissue boxes.  The truth is that with this cold I just haven't been out much to see things to inspire painting.

I sat down on Monday and looked around for something to draw or paint.  I saw the box of tissues, and some apples.

I painted them separately, using my Daniel Smith watercolor sticks.  (those sticks are so hand to paint with, especially since I've been sick.  The set up and clean up are so fast!)

Mostly I was going for bold colour, deep, interesting shadows and form.  the tissue box shape got away from me a bit as I was painting, the top left edge went a little wonky, but over all it works OK.  I am really enjoying doing watercolour sketches, where the pressure is off to produce something that will sell, but instead just to create something and use the result as part of my learning process.

365 Days of Art - Day 99 Up Close

Wow, it's amazing how fast a week flies by when you are afflicted with the worst cold of your life and can't climb a flight of stairs without taking a nap at the other end.

I did manage to get a lot of drawing and "stuff" done, but I didn't get a lot of blog writing done.  Cough syrup with codeine makes me a little loopy and I try not to blog under the influence.

Now...

 
Thinking back I remember having lunch with my husband downtown.  I arrived early and snagged myself a prime table and a foo-foo coffee.  Then, instead of being swept up by the streams of humanity going by, I tried to focus on people that I thought would be around for at least ten minutes.  (disclaimer:  It seems that my ability to judge how much time people will be hanging around is about as highly evolved as my ability to fight a cold)

I did a lot of drawing of people, but when I look back through the drawings this page with two "half" portraits is my favorite.

I admit that I'm not finding it any easier to draw or paint "in public".  I try to find a spot that is out of the way, but still has a good view.  I try to keep my back against a wall, so that people can't come up and look over my shoulder unless I know about it.

I still find myself feeling painfully embarrassed when I am "discovered" making drawings.  Although I do try to put on a happy face and I always have a business card with my web address on it.

I wonder how people do this all the time?

It Sounds Better Than It Is

So, I've spent the majority of the last few days in bed.  I have books piled up on the bedside table, I have my laptop, my cat at my feet and some drawing materials.  (note to self: pastels don't make a good bed companion... to dusty!)

The trouble is, of course that I have the demon cold from hell and, and am constantly coughing violently and tipping over my tea and scattering my pencils everywhere.

I thought I could update the 365 Days of Art while I was here with my pillows, but technical difficulties either with my camera, or my photo software is making all my pictures turn out stretched and weird looking.  And if I was to get up the energy to go downstairs to the office to scan the drawings and paintings I would have to take a cot so I could have a nap once I was down there.  Frankly the whole thing just seems a little too daunting.

However, the good news is that after seeing my doctor I don't have pneumonia again (whew) and I have an inhaler for the inflammation in my lungs, and some super strength cough syrup that let me get a whole 7 hours of sleep last night. So I'm on the mend, and hoping to sort out the technical difficulties soon.  Maybe after my nap.

The Plague!

We are having a very unseasonably warm fall.  Actually warm isn't the word.  It's really, really hot.  We've been in the 90's (F) now for a few days which is a short step up from the 80s we've had all week. 

The normals for my chilly little corner of the world is the mid to low 60's for September.  The leaves on the trees are falling, but they haven't all changed colour yet and the the grass is crunchy.

Normally it would be a time to hang out and rejoice in the sun, but the family all have some kind of chest cold.  My husband claims to have it the worst (and of course he does, he's a man!).  I am always nervous about coughs ever since I got pneumonia last year.  My ribs have that ache from coughing, but no fever yet, so I'm just keeping my fingers crossed and if I feel worse I head in to see my long suffering doctor and present her with my latest issue!

On the good news side I've been spending more time parked on my butt and doing art work instead of running around.  So I guess there is a silver lining to my lung issues!  hmmm... that just doesn't sound right.

Just When You Thought It Couldn't Get Any Better....

My husband woke me up about four hours too early this morning to drag my scraped, oozing, brused body downstairs so I could then drag the recycling bin from the pantry to the back door so he could dump it into the blue bin and wheel that out to the alley.

Huh? The only explanation I can think of is that he had accidentally stepped in something unfortunate while taking the garbage bags out.  I suspect I won't ask him, because he hates it when I point out his um.... Insane Idosyncrasies^TM .

I also woke up with a whole new symphony of pain in my body from the faceplant/wipeout/dermabrasion I did on Monday night.  I have muscle pains in my neck, back, shoulders, abdomen, and in the muscles of both forearms.  The bruises are starting to surface too.  Which is making it difficult for my husband to actually want to be seen with me.  I have a bruising near both eyes and my right arm is swollen to about a third again it's normal size. I'm just glad that the weather is good so I can wear short sleeves and not have any of my wounds wind up sticking to my clothes... although in reality if it was cold I wouldn't have been out playing ball in the first place.

The good news is that we might be heading out to a central Alberta Lake with the kids for a little break from the city.  And I can probably hideout behind my enormous sunglasses for a few hours and the hub will at least acknowledge that he knows me!

Good Thing My Doctor Likes Me

Or she might have been offended when I kissed her!

OK... in the interest of full disclosure... I didn't really kiss her.

But, she did tell me that the pain and mobility issues I'm having are all due to swelling, and that the elbow and wrist joints are fine.

and that means that when the swelling goes down, the pencil will be picked up and I can get back to work - and I'm really, REALLY excited about that.

I'm also really happy that so many of my friends, colleagues and cyber-artist-commune residents told me to stop being childishly stupid and get over having to push pause on the 365 Day Challenge.  I will be happy to get back to work and start at Day 35 and work from there.  I'm hoping that the swelling has gone down by next week so I can sketch at the Zoo while the kids are at camp... I love sketching at the zoo.  :-)

Chaos, Panic, Disorder.... You Know, The Usual!

I know it sounds so elitist to say it, but I love my laptop and the fact that I can write my blog while lying in bed!

Why am I in bed on a beautiful sunny day?  Well this is the last few hours I'll have to myself for many days, and it's also some of the few hours that I have had for myself in weeks!  And I'm worn clean through.

I haven't updated this blog in a long time, mostly because I either have nothing to offer, or because I'm so tired at the end of the day that I can't string words together in any meaningful way.  Although a lot of interesting (and weird) things have happened recently, I really can't write about them without exposing my family.  I'm OK with exposing myself to critique, but my family and friends don't need that in their lives.

School is winding up and I've been busy helping out at the school, and winding up all the paper work that will set the kids up for next year.  I've been finding books, and socks, and papers.  I've been sorting and fussing about things, and going on a lot of “end of the year” field trips with my girls' classes.  I did get confirmation that the teachers do give me the more difficult kids on the trips “because we know you can handle it”.  Which makes it mighty tempting to “misplace” someone occasionally.  But of course I would not do that (as tempting as it might be).

So here are the highlights:

My buddy, who I paint with once a week, hasn't seen me for nearly a month.  At least she is understanding and is giving me 21 days to get my act together and get back to work with her!  Which is good, because I need the deadline right now.

I am working on a project, but I'm not sure how it's going to turn out, so you will just have to wait and see (I'm such a tease).

I discovered that two-bite brownies spread with peanut butter is an excellent treat (and may have saved my husbands life last week when I was feeling particularly stressed).

And finally, for those of you in the art world, I will be starting up a product review section of the blog over the summer, and let you know the results of some of the new things I've tried recently and how they worked for me. ( I'll even put in pictures, how's that for a deal)

But today.  Well today I'm going to put on some fresh coffee, lounge about, read a magazine and maybe work on a poem or two.  Tomorrow the chaos begins again!