New Sketchbook

I FINALLY finished the last page of my old sketchbook that I'd been carrying around for over a year. The cover was falling off, and the pages were pretty tattered.

It's so exciting to start a new sketchbook. It's the same kind as the old one, with thick smooth paper, but it's all possibility still. This is my first drawing in it! My goal is to draw in it every day.

I love how many people are so themselves--despite current trends. They may be perceived as old-fashioned, and perhaps they are, but they are not being concerned with that. They're just going about their lives, doing what they do, and being who they are. This character strikes me that way.

Illustration Friday: Acrobat

I had the idea, I found source photos, I made three sketches, and I was going to do this in pen and ink, but to play around with the composition, I scanned the three sketches, and moved them around, and then thought, what the heck--what can I do with this digitally. I think I'll still do an ink version, though, since I'm so in love with ink.

Immovable #2

Here's the other picture I started for Illustration Friday, whenever that was, for the topic "immovable". Couples are sometimes immovable in their interactions with each other.

This is another study in expressions. It's subtle, but I hope their set lips and rigid expressions show, at least a little bit.

House Concert Sketches

Marvelous house concert--friend John Anderson from Australia sang all sorts of wonderful songs. He looked pretty funny with his head and face all shaved off though (notice the before and after pictures), and I discovered while making these sketches that I can't draw and listen to poetry at the same time. I could listen to songs, but when another friend read a couple poems, none of it registered, even though I was only making hatchings in a dark area and not really drawing properly. Interesting way the brain processes things.

Wacky Sortof Self-Portrait

So....I'm doing some of the little exercises in this book I bought, to learn how to do the Corel Painter program. Actually, I have two books, one very formal and one very loose. I've learned a lot from both of them. It still seems like a waste of time, but alas, this is what I need to be doing. I need to be creating SOMETHING, and currently my art table is blocked off by huge stacks of boxes, which will hopefully be gone in a day or two.