Doctor Martin

My wonderful sister-in-law is graduating from medical school next week. I'm so incredibly proud of her. She's worked so hard. She then immediately starts her residency in family practice. She's going to be an incredible doctor.

(This is a card I made for her graduation. It doesn't really look like her, but then I've never really done portraits. It's got a bunch of problems that I'm not going to fix, but it's a card, and better than Hallmark for the occasion.) Okay, so I did "fix" a few things, but my son said at dinner last night, you better not show that to her....it's kind of insulting, don't you think? It makes her look like a man, and...." I STILL say it's just a card, and any homemade card is better than a store-bought one, so yes, I AM going to give it to her. I wrote a letter to her on the back.

Curly Dog

The task for this drawing was to show the curliness of the dog's hair without drawing every single strand of it...just like with the baobab tree, to show (or suggest) the leaves without drawing individual ones. This is something I KNOW, but haven't had a whole lot of experience with....

Illustration Friday: Adapt

I finally got a new sketchbook. I really like it. My goal is to do at least one drawing per day in it. What are the chances that the drawing I was doing this morning just happened to fit the topic posted this morning?

Baobab trees adapt to harsh, dry climates by growing huge, thick trunks to store water. This is one from Australia, but different species of them also grow in Africa and Madagascar. I think they're pretty cool.

As far as the drawing goes, I didn't know if I had the patience to do it, and I found that I did, but just barely. It's nowhere near as cool as Ces's trees, but alas, I'm not Ces. I've always loved trees, and have drawn a lot of them, but only the trunks and branches, never the leafy parts, because how in the world does one do that? Perhaps that's something I ought to work on....

Illustration Friday: Cracked

This is the final week of the semester, and it's been crazy-busy with various performances, graduations, grading, family gatherings, etc. and I've been thinking about this topic for the past five days, and not coming to any astounding conclusions.

But then yesterday, my musical group spent the day in an art gallery recording some of our best tunes, and the exhibit that was up--wow! I'm totally inspired, and got a great idea for the topic.

It's going to take a bit of research, though, and in the meantime, I though I could make a sketch of two. I was going to use the back of the paper that THIS was on, which I'd made for the "flawed" topic, and never posted because I didn't like it, but there are things I like about it now. I cropped it, and painted on it with India ink, and while I wouldn't send it or give it to anyone, it's worth a little time on a Tuesday afternoon.

Cold Weather Girl

Started this earlier in the week...No real purpose in making it. It was just that I wasn't making anything else, and needed to be. I seem to be back to the dripping pen nib...

Rollerskate Girl

I did this today at school. Everything's graded (at least until finals next week), and everyone is working on projects. Not much for me to do. I spent part of the day working of stuff for next year, but then it seemed like a perfect opportunity for picture-making. I've been wanting to get some pictures to submit to a small children's magazine that only uses pen and ink stuff. I was on-file for them a number of years ago, but they never gave me an assignment. So I figure it's time to start sending them samples again.

I won't send this because it's done with a fine point sharpie marker on printer paper--not ideal by any means, but I had fun doing it. I may transfer the image to better paper, and use a better kind of pen and ink to do it again (and fix some of the perspective wierdnesses). But I'm happy to be making pictures again....

Illustration Friday: Contagious

I haven't looked at anyone else's pictures yet, but this was the idea that immediately came to mind. As a public school teacher, I spend my days breathing germs that my students are constantly spewing. But I have only gotten sick once in the past five years, and that time, even though my temp was 102, I was better two days later.

It would be nicer to think of happy contagious things--like smiles or laughter, but this has been a hard couple weeks for me. I'm surprised I'm doing any art at all--and I haven't been able to muster the energy for the kinds of things I've been working on. So this was just a little pen sketch (from Friday, no less) glued down on another piece of paper, and played with. Playing is good. Playing may just get me and my two sons through the rest of this school year, if not unscathed, then still who we are.

(This whole thing was just a bit too big for my scanner in all directions, so this is cropped....)

Illustration Friday: Hierarchy

*************** The child thinks that in her family, her dog is just as important as she is--he's FAMILY. She doesn't know, though, that to her parents she is infinitely more precious. The dog is just a dog, but she is their child.

On the other hand, all dogs, no matter how beloved, are the lowest of the family members, and to be a good family dog, he must think of even the smallest child as being above him.

As far as the picture goes, this one has been a disappointment. I stopped working on it in total disgust. I really liked the initial drawing, but I'm having massive rendering failure. I had models for their faces, but I drew both the dog's and her body in different positions, and have no idea where the lights and darks are, and was too lazy to set up any kind of lights and try to figure it out. It's time to move on to the next thing. This one goes in the 25% of "don't like" pictures, except that I like a few things about it, so maybe that makes it part of the 50% of "sort-of okay" pictures.

Sitting Owl

Well....this is the companion piece to last week's flying owl. This was harder because it was more static, and I'm not sure that I really like it. I've never done drawings of any sort of animals before (except dogs because I have a dog, and horses when I was a kid and had horses) and it was kindof hard to figure out what to do about all those feathers that I definitely don't have the patience to look at one by one. I suppose this means I'll need to do some more so I can learn how to do this. Like nothing risked, nothing gained sort of thing, and if I'm going to do it, then I'd really better do it all the way.