Illustration Friday: Soaked

Okay--so I know this is from last week, but I started working on this last week, and it's honestly taken me this long. I did a lot of little sketches to develop the idea, and then got my son to model for me, then made some big sketches, and then cut them out and moved them around, and then transferred (roughly) it all to a big sheet of watercolor paper, and then....it was all process from there. But this was way more planned and organized than most of my pieces are. I can see where I still could have used more planning, but alas, I am done now.

The topic was "soaked" and that's something you very much want to avoid when encountering skunks.

By the way, this is very large, perhaps 20" and 14 or 15". It looks better if you click on it to make it larger.....

End of Old Sketchbook/Start of New Sketchbook

It's always such an accomplishment to finish a sketchbook. My goal used to be to fill one up in a year, so that I could show it all to my friend Jan when she came to visit from Portland, but I started this one in October, and I'm done now, in May. That's only 7 months, and the funny thing is that I really really like a whole lot of what's in there, and even the stuff I'm not completely crazy about, I still like in a certain kind of way. There are no pages that I hate (not that I'd get rid of them, but it's nice to not even have them.)

So these are sketches from a neighborhood mediation meeting. It was an interesting meeting, and I filled up five pages in my sketchbook, and now I've started a new one.....and here's one picture from the new one (this is from a picture, not from life, though I do know the guy....)

The pictures above are actually in the reverse order they should be.....

Fiddle Breeze

I have to say that working on pictures makes me really happy. It feels like meditation, pure and simple. When I'm making lines, I'm right there with each line. I'm not thinking about anything else, but the lines, and the values, and the movement. I don't think it gets much better than that.

This was about an inch too big for the scanner, so it cut off some of the top and bottom. Maybe I'll see if there's a bigger scanner at work.

Nope. Still too narrow. But looking at this again, I'm thinking it's too fussy, too many lines. I might need to simplify.....

Bruce

I really truly am going to start some "real" things soon, but these little portraits are at least keeping my hand moving in the meantime....

Chinless Man

Another one.....

Leroy

Not much to say. I decided that it was better to be making pictures that I wasn't all that excited about than making nothing at all. Someone reminded me a couple days ago that things that are worth doing are worth doing badly, which, actually, sounds pretty bad, but it gets me thinking about students and writing and how, as someone said (and I wish I remembered whom) that if young people knew what crap they were writing, they wouldn't write at all, but if you're ever going to get anywhere, you sure as hell better be doing it.

So while I may be lacking in inspiration and ideas, I am making a number of small portraitish drawings, and for the record, I took all the reference photos myself. One of my goals is to get all my reference material myself.

Suzy (Sort of)

Not really anything to say. Pretty simple and straight-forward. This is a lot smaller than what I've been working on....

Fire Dance

Faster this time. It comes back a lot faster the second time. I'm not sure that I should be spending my time on this (I have some pen and ink things I REALLY want to do, but keep getting diverted--by gardening projects, by work, by social obligations. Argh!