New Medium

Dabbled a bit with a new medium this week, with mixed results—Derwent Graphitint* pencils. In this first one, I also used a few watercolor pencils to liven up the foreground. In the following image, I just used the Graphitint pencils. I think these clouds were inspired by the wildfire smoke that has again descended on the

Fearless Sketching

My computer is on its last legs, and I need to figure out how to convert my Chromebook to linux, so blogging will be a bit tough until I figure it all out. I purchased a refurbished desktop that I had to send back. It got very unreliable after a month of use! I have

Trees

In these daysof limited art time, I decided to do some life drawings of trees. I need to make them look more three dimensional in my paintings, with branches that come forward toward the viewer. Fortunately I live among so many trees. I traced out some circles in my moleskine sketchbook and did this with

Two Sessions

There is always room to make a few pockets of art time. Today I did a value sketch and did a small sketchbook gouache for a full moon challenge in an online art group. The gouache was sloppy because I rushed through. A day to assess and try to improve on all fronts. Gouche: dry

Sketches

I am going to try to work on my drawing skills more this month, although I wish I had infinite time to do art all day long. Yesterday I did a value sketch of a southwestern desert scene from the back of a guidebook. Today a deer sketch. I found the head especially difficult especially

Too many inputs

Photo by Mike Petrucci on Unsplash.com We are still in various stages of the same headcold here. Not testing positive for covid, it seems like just a cold from the old days, you know, when we didn’t have to even worry that a cold MIGHT be covid. Anyway, I was going to paint today, but

Basic skills

While waiting for my own copy of Mastering Composition to arrive, I decided to start trying pencil sketches from photos to work on basic skills. No grids, no rulers. The boss is not impressed.

Deep Winter

So far, the winter weather has not been cause for complaint here. Nonetheless, I find myself afflicted with a deep case of seasonal affective disorder, that began to appear just after Thanksgiving. My car was hit while my son had borrowed it, and it took a full month to get an estimate, after which we

Art Supply Hoarding

Some women buy too many shoes or handbags, but I hoard art and craft supplies. My yarn stash is dwindling. My quilting supplies are slowly being drawn down, but I still can’t resist trying new art supplies. I bought a set of water soluble graphite pencils a while ago, when working through a David Bellamy

What a Week

Well, let’s see where I left off. After a few weeks of feeling out of sorts, I woke up Wednesday with an elevated pulse and chest tightness, and a bit out of breath. I got the pulse down after chugging three glasses of water, but since I had been trying to ignore the other symptoms