End-of-the-month Sketches

Now that I'm trying all these new media, here are some traditional sketches, which seem to be the backbone of my artistic life.  

I'm getting together periodically with three other really cool women to sketch.  Several of us are trying to expand our repertoire to include landscapes, architecture, and SPACES.  I duly took charcoal and pencil to draw with since I was going to draw new things (instead of the usual pen and ink I use to draw people), but alas, I just don't have the patience for it.  I did two drawings with charcoal--one of a person in a setting, and the other of a copse of trees that was structurally interesting, but then I ended up sketching the other women sketching, much more my usual thing.

This is my foot, all crinkled up to make some interesting shapes, on the drive to the Prairie Festival at the Land Institute in Salina, KS yesterday.  Unfortunately the road was not completely straight, so the light kept changing.

This is the first of many sketches sitting in the barn listening to fabulous speakers.  Because Wendall Berry was one of them, there were many more people than there  usually are.  I'd say at least 200 were listening.

  I find I can draw quite well while listening to folks talking.  Drawing doesn't in any way detract from my ability to pay attention to the speakers.

 The only thing I can't draw while listening to is poetry reading.  It's peculiar, but I suspect poetry gets routed through a slightly different part of my brain, and one that either overlaps or interferes with the drawing part of my brain.

But overall, I find this a pleasing collection of sketches.

New Medium

It's interesting how different media prompts different sorts of pictures.  I've never done scratchboard before, but it looked like so much fun.  So I ordered some little scratchboards, and a little set of tools, and have been having great fun with it.  I did this during a talk at the Prairie Festival at the Land Institute this afternoon.  I was worried that the little scratching sounds would bother the people around me, but my partner said that he hadn't heard it at all.

Old Country Drummer

So....here's the picture I've been working on off and on all week.  Way more satisfying than those faces......

Too bad that my scanner isn't nearly big enough for this.  This is photographed, and the quality is really low (plus I can't get it completely flat, so not all of it is in focus.)

29 Faces--#14

Okay, so I guess I am going to make a few more of these......

29 Faces--#12 and #13

Frankly, I'm tired of these faces. Not faces in general, because faces are always interesting, but THESE faces. This perspective, this lighting, this technique (for these faces anyway). So this might be it for now. I have other projects in the works. I have seen other things that other people have done that I would like to try, so I think I will.

I'm still two days behind on the 29 faces challenge.

Why is the picture with the old woman with the hat smaller here than the one below it? The original is over twice as big. The file is over twice as big. The settings here are the same. I am at the mercy of these computer programs.....

29 Faces--#11

Too tired....no time. Work takes up way too much of my day, and then I have to go to bed.....

29 Faces--#9 and #10

Here are two that I'm not sure I want to do anything else to. Or, I guess I should say that I really like the way they are now, with the gouache and ink rinsed off. I have three others that I don't particularly like at this stage, so I will definitely be working them some more.

But if I work on these two some more, can I call them two new ones, or are they still #9 and #10? Yes, they're still definitely the same ones. But I honestly don't think I can do 29 different ones in one month.

29 Faces--#7 and #8

I really don't think I'm going to be able tokeep up with 29 faces. But here are the last two of the four I started a couple days ago. I'm going to have to do something different for the next ones, as I have run out of white gouache. For some reason, when I was ordering gouache, I forgot to order white, and just had a little tube left over from something.

But I think these have a lot of possibility. I'm trying to tell myself not to get too fussy with them. The gouache and ink part is pretty crude, and it wouldn't fit to be fussy with the lines.

29 Faces--#5 and #6

I can see already that this is going to be really hard to keep up with. 29 faces in 30 days. If I can include sketchbook faces, it would be a piece of cake, because I do those all the time. But these more deliberate things. We'll see.....

So there are things I like about each of these, but then other things that I don't. I see you can't really make "corrections" with the black ink, because it has a different sheen putting it on at this point.

So this makes me only two days behind (still). I have two more in the works, which if I could finish them today, I'd be caught up. But then what about tomorrow. This might be too much pressure....

29 Faces--Catching up with #3 and #4

Two more with the gouache resist andIndia ink. I was so skeptical at first, and not liking the crudeness, but I guess if one is going to experiment with something, then only making one isn't really enough. So I may do all 29 of these faces with this technique, and see what happens.

29 Faces--#2 The Bellow

Okay....here's the second one. I started four days late, so I'm going to have some catching up to do. This is altogether too many posts, so I may double up.

But this is another gouache resist and India ink. My son and I both agreed that I shouldn't adulterate this one with lines, so I won't. Or, at least I don't think I will.

29 Faces

I just ran across this cool challenge--29 Faces in September--to do 29 faces in 30 days, and since faces are my THING, I think I'll do it. Here's the link, to Ayala's Art site, with her challenge: http://ilove2paint.blogspot.com/p/29-faces-sept.html.

Meeting days sketches

So.....it's back to school, back to work, back to meetings. Here are two sketches from two different days of meetings. Looking at some of the old scans, from earlier professional development days, these seem a bit deficient. But alas. A sketch is a sketch, and it is what it is.......

Illustration Friday: Identical

I have this really cool book on facial expressions, with about a hundred pictures of maybe sixty or seventy people--of all ages and types making all sorts of different expressions. It's really fun to draw series of them. Can you tell this is the same person? (I'm not sure that I can).

This is also a new technique--one I'm not sure that I will ever do again. It's a gouache resist with black ink stroked over it, and then the whole thing run under the sink when it's dry to wash the ink-over-gouache off. It's a bit crude, and wasteful, I think, of gouache, but has some interesting possibilities. But the thing about new techniques is that there's a learning curve, and only by working with it again and again can you gain any kind of control over it. Things can be pretty dreadful at first, but I think I'll post anyway, just as a demonstration (maybe even just to myself).

Nope. I couldn't live with that. So I added some more pen work, and feel much better. (That's the one on top.) So I reckon I'll be trying this again.

Okay, so the third person didn't work. Snip. Enough of this already.....