November 8th, 2009
As much as I hate to admit it, I learned about Honeycrisp apples from Oprah Winfrey. It was on one of her lists of her favorite things, and I stumbled across it on the web some time ago. I thought, “I like apples, what the heck… let’s try these honeycrisps,” and that was it. I was ruined for other apples. Now, I look forward to September/October the way a kid looks forward to Christmas.
The season is almost over, though the local grocery stores will continue importing them from some place south of here for a little while longer. Thought I would capture one so I could daydream until next year.
Posted in Charcoal, Food | 1 Comment »
November 8th, 2009
These pictures of a cat toy were done for my drawing class.
The top one is a pencil drawing and was a study in composition. We spent a good hour or more sketching out different compositions until we found one we liked. I liked this one because it is just plain silly… looks to me like the scene of a crime. There is a cat out there somewhere hiding from the authorities.
The bottom picture was a pen study in shading and line quality. The gist of the exercise, as far as I can tell, was to demonstrate how lines can be made to simulate shading from a distance.
Posted in Graphite, Ink, Lessons | 1 Comment »
October 17th, 2009
Our condo has a small area at the front of the living room that is not exactly part of the living room, but neither is it a separate room. The floor plans referred to it as a den. I suppose with an open floor plan, you can call any area anything you want; but I get a kick out of showing guests “the den”.
This was a 30-minute sketch: 4B pencil in my sketchbook. Just trying to capture the light/shadow from the lamp.
Posted in Everyday Matters, Graphite | 1 Comment »
October 15th, 2009
Hobos are known to share their brown paper bags. I’m not a hobo, but I am still willing to share mine with you.
This was drawn in class this evening. 18×24 charcoal on Canson drawing paper which was graciously supplied by the instructor. This was too large for my scanner, so I had to photograph it with my phone (because it seemed like too much trouble to dig out the good camera); that dark spot on the bottom-right is my shadow.
Posted in Charcoal, Everyday Matters | 1 Comment »
October 14th, 2009
So there you have it: the eggs that I’ve been drawing are hard-boiled. Just a little insurance against one of them trying to make a run for it, taking the death leap from the table to the floor in a misguided attempt to escape.
Posted in Charcoal, Food | 1 Comment »
October 11th, 2009
Following the lead of my drawing instructor, I purchased some gesso and have painted a couple of common items flat white. This helps to simplify the light/shadow interaction and allows me to focus more on shape and shade rather than having to worry about things like reflections or distortion caused by viewing things through glass.
You’ll probably see these items appear again in future drawings.
Posted in Charcoal, Food | No Comments »
October 11th, 2009
Fall is officially here. Summer activities are no longer in the way, and the weather isn’t completely frigid yet, so it is the perfect time to sign up for a drawing class. The School at the Art Institute of Chicago offers evening and weekend drawing classes, and I’ve been toying with the idea of taking a drawing class for a while now. Classes started on the first of October; I am enrolled in ‘Beginning Drawing’.
I drew these eggs last night as part of my homework. This week was our second class, and the topic was shading. We spent the bulk of the class drawing white objects on a white surface. As boring as that sounds, it turns out to be a great way to learn to see subtle variations of tone; and as you can see, white can actually be pretty darned dark.
My hand-eye coordination still needs some work — the egg on the left is a bit misshapen. But I feel like I am improving even after just a couple of weeks of class. If nothing else, I am becoming much more comfortable with charcoal (check out my previous attempts with charcoal to see what I mean).
Posted in Charcoal, Food | 1 Comment »
September 10th, 2009
I was happy with my loosey-goosey sketch of that garlic crock the other night, and (apparently) lacking much in the way of creativity, I decided to try it again: this time a little more controlled, and I tried to make the composition a bit more interesting by placing a bit of garlic in front of the crockery.
I stuck with the Cotman paints and waterbrush just for the sake of seeing whether I could keep things from getting too messy.
The main issue I have with this is that I don’t think I got quite enough contrast. This has been an issue that I’ve had from the beginning; though I do feel like I’m slowly improving in that regard.
Posted in Everyday Matters, Food, Watercolor | 6 Comments »
September 8th, 2009
As I slowly reintroduce art back into my daily routine, I thought I would try a very loose painting today. This garlic crock stood out while I was cleaning up after dinner. It keeps moisture from getting into the heads of garlic stored within, and it looks nice sitting on the counter.
I eschewed the under-drawing, opting instead to lay down the paint directly. Accuracy suffered, but I like the looseness of the image. I also opted to use my student-grade paints and a waterbrush for this one, because they are just less hassle to deal with; and tonight was all about minimizing hassle.
Posted in Everyday Matters, Food, Watercolor | No Comments »
September 8th, 2009
My artistic output this past month has been–shall we say–light. In part, this was due to the planning and preparation for a two-week camping trip out west.
I had great plans for drawing and painting for hours at a time. But the reality of camping in Yellowstone and Custer State Park (South Dakota) was that we were either driving, hiking, sight-seeing, or cooking/eating/washing-up almost every waking hour. We did manage to shoot close to 1400 photographs while we were out there (hooray for digital photography! I would NOT want to pay for all that film to be developed), so maybe I’ll try drawing from some of the pics we snapped.
I did manage to spend one afternoon painting at our campsite. This was our home for most of the trip.
Posted in Ink, Nature, Watercolor | No Comments »
As much as I hate to admit it, I learned about Honeycrisp apples from Oprah Winfrey. It was on one of her lists of her favorite things, and I stumbled across it on the web some time ago. I thought, “I like apples, what the heck… let’s try these honeycrisps,” and that was it. I was ruined for other apples. Now, I look forward to September/October the way a kid looks forward to Christmas.
