A White Sketch

This morning, I was thumbing through a National Geographic and saw an ad that had a picture of a polar bear.

The Bogus unbleached drawing pad seemed to lend itself to attempting a sketch (it always does, but it also almost always disappoints me -- not enough "tooth" or roughness) so off I went with a very limited palette: white, cobalt blue, light gray, dark turquoise, cool dark brown, and a touch of black.

I started out with pastel pencils, which are fairly hard, and then shifted to soft pastels for the blue. For the first time, I used a foam make-up wedge to smooth the colors of the background... and hated the result.

Switching back to the pencils, I intensified the color of the foreground and background with crosshatching and no smoothing, and I liked the result much better. Hours later, i can see where I could have added a touch more blue on the bear's fur. 

And this is the other day's work, with a little bit of mistiness added.

The above mentioned foam makeup triangles did well for adding a touch of mist.

So many of these sketches are less than stellar, but I'm having a good time playing with them.

Two Days' Effort

Last Christmas, Bernie gifted me with Astrobrights cardstock -- neon pink, bright yellow, orange, red, and green.

I used a couple sheets for greeting cards, but was fairly stumped as to how to use the rest. However, Lillian the Covetous and Color-Craving began begging me for sheets. I decided to emulate her, and so dragged some vividly colored sheets out to the new studio to play with.

There's the mess I was fiddling with Tuesday, and today, Thursday (23 October).

By no means is it done. But I wanted to take a picture of it to show what it looked like before I ruin it trying to finish it tomorrow.

Also, I have to add that working on eye-searing paper ... uh, duh, sears my eyeballs.

We'll hand in a final decision when the thing is done.

O The Embarrassment

I've been working on a new pastel, and the preliminary sketch for next week's Press cover, and furiously made three pages of notes for my upcoming NaNovel, but the completed item today was more crappy poetry. It's about creative efforts ... kind of.

Remember, it's supposed to be crappy.

A fat frog in a blender --
Not an image you should render
Even if you have been on a three-week bender.
It's sure to make someone puke.

"A cook who's being petty
Will put pigs' feet on spaghetti
And instead of apple, make Broccoli Brown Betty,
Daring diners to rebuke.

"You should not sew a ruffle
On a khaki Army duffle
It will make soldiers weep and stomp off in a huffle,
And the nation then would fall.

"But if you are going to write
And bring 50 thou words to light
Just pound out those flagrant phrases, pound with all your might.
It's November, after all.

An Abstract

Okay, this was actually last Monday's creative effort, but the upload of the picture didn't work right for some reason.

I started this with an image from the Smithsonian's Flickr stuff, found the angles cool, and proceeded to add color to it, with a limited palette.

It's a palette selection that pleases me, as you can see from the autumn hues that I chose for the other work above. 

Learning Patience

This was today's effort.

It's a practice piece; an art book I bought called Drawing: A Complete Course by Jenny Rodwell has this as a study of shapes in charcoal and chalk, to be done on gray paper, so as to automatically do medium tones.

I have no gray paper, but I do have a brown coarse paper, and since I didn't have artist chalk or vine charcoal sticks, I used soft pastels in dark brown and white. And a Q-tip for shading, since I no longer have a supply of tortillons.

When I copied the proposed grouping (starting with a pastel pencil in naples yellow),  the centering and balance were off, so I added another shape on the left.

The best part of this exercise was doing it in my new work area in the garage. My old work table has been elevated to a standing work station, with a tall drafting stool when I want to sit. I opened the garage door for a beautiful morning light, and loved having a wide open work area again after a year of trying to use this all-too-cluttered desk. 

Yes, that was the best part. By the time I was nearly done I was tired of brown and white, and irritated with the explanation in the text and the mistakes in the lighting of the example.

However, it did warm me back up on some fundamentals, and I had the very pleasant experience of having Bernie come out to sit and have coffee with me while I worked. I'm besotted with the work area, the more so since Bernie decided I needed better light in there and went out and bought a new ceiling fixture.

I should probably do about fifty million of this kind of practice, but I know I won't.

A Familiar-Looking Baboon

Looking through a National Geographic magazine, I spotted a baboon in the background of an ad, and decided to make that my first sketch in a new notebook.

Reminds me of Narsai. It's not the greatest sketch in the world, but I did clean most of the common areas of the house today, do laundry, and assemble my lovely, lovely new studio drafting stool, as well as tear apart my natural-light floor lamp and re-assemble it as a table lamp.

This is the first sketch I did out there in the new studio area. 

Graphite pencil. 9B, as soft as you get without resorting to vine charcoal.

Thursday the 16th of October

Okay, it's nothing great.

But I wanted to write some crappy free verse stuff for a thread (link later) in a forum. And here it is:

i was conversing with tejon just the other day
and he said that he thought my penchant
for crappy poetry would be my downfall
i told him that a downfall would at least
be some sort of movement
be it right direction or not
aser he replied you have no direction at all
you're right I told him and that is why no matter which way
i move i can count it as progress

your progress is another woman s landfill he told me
but i reminded him
that there are a lot of gullies to fill up
in west virginia

he was annoyed but could not refute me

the best he could come up with was
but maybe they like having gullies

fine i conceded
i ll send my stuff to shore up the levees
in new orleans

he laughed and gave me the address for homeland security
and the mayor s office in that beleaguered city

I love Don Marquis "Archy and Mehitabel" stuff, and have tried to emulate it since I discovered it 42 years ago. I should do more of it since I enjoy it so much.

Also, I flagrantly bought yet another drawing pad, this one spiral bound, named "Sketch Journal". I hope to begin using it tomorrow, and in addition to whatever writing I do, have a bit of sketch every day.