Yesterday shortly after our Thanksgiving dinner the power went out–something that happens far too frequently here. We do have a backup battery that runs a few lights for a while. We all gathered cozily around the fireplace with candles but were soon back in the kitchen where we could read. This is a quick sketch of Emma reading “Calvin and Hobbes.” I think children’s gestures are wonderful but they move so constantly! The was the only pose that lasted long enough for me to get anything down.
I’m about to wrestle a 16-lb. turkey and prepare many other dishes. So my visiting grandchildren, Emma and Mason, have helped out by collaborating with me on today’s drawing. Emma says the turkey didn’t have enough detail so she added the “rainbow slippers” as well as the Pilgrim hat. Mason, who has just started studying Chinese at his public(!) middle school, added some characters to class things up. It says “Hello China”–something he knows how to write. I only had to do the hills, sun and trees. Happy Thanksgiving!
Today’s drawing is a minimal one. Alison and her crew are about to arrive and today is Ed’s birthday so I’m up to my elbows in pecan pie, candied orange peels and boeuf bourguignon (for tonight). This is my little plastic farmer guy with his axe. I only have a plastic chicken so had to use a not-very-helpful photo of a turkey instead. Anyway, it’s done and now to the pumpkin pie…..Happy Thanksgiving in case I don’t get to post tomorrow.
I just brought the paperwhites into the light since they’re starting to shoot up. I hope I’ve timed it right; at this point they look pretty washed out. This drawing is an experiment with sepia ink, an old-fashioned dip pen and an ink wash. I love the forms of the bulbs. When you pay really close attention to natural forms the intricacy of the detail is mind-boggling.
A quick sketch of Ed but not quite right. I’m trying ink more and enjoying it but find it frustrating not to be able to erase. Getting a likeness is hard for me–even with a face so familiar and covered in whiskers!
Here’s a self portrait–very formidable woman. I always concentrate so hard when I’m drawing or painting myself I usually wind up looking pretty grim. But I do like having a patient model who knows how to hold still!
This is a very quick sketch of a persimmon I was using for a still life painting. It got riper and riper as I painted and by the time I finished I was sure it would be good. Alas, it turned my mouth inside out; one bite was all I could stand.
Through DrawMo! I heard about Illustration Friday, an online group that assigns a drawing topic every Friday. The topic for this week was “scale” so here’s my response. I thought it would be easier to draw the figures on an actual piece of music but it wound being a headache, working at that tiny tiny scale. I used the Muybridge photos of a guy walking up stairs and another photo for the figure playing the trumpet.
I subscribe to an online art instruction newsletter www.artacademy.com. The tutorial this week was “Drawing Drapery” so I pinned a cloth to the wall and spent way too much time drawing the “pipe” folds in it. It was a useful exercise but the result really looks like “Drawing 101.”
Now that it’s colder and we don’t have to worry about the bears getting into it Ed has put up the bird feeder. (Oh the joys of country living!) Last year it took a while for the birds to find it but I guess some of them remembered this time around. We have lots of traffic–mostly black-capped chickadees, some nuthatches and occasionally goldfinches. Drawing the chickadees was frustrating because they only light for a millisecond to grab a seed and go. It took me forever to get the first two and then I just grabbed a camera for the ones in the background. The bag holds tiny thistle seeds for the goldfinches.
Andrea Doughtie, Rural Painter 