Sunday, March 29, 2009

A trip to Indiana

Left around 7:00am this morning for a Casino trip to Four Winds Casino. We stopped by this wonderful *northwoods style* restaurant. Beautiful furnishings and view. The Inn is rated as *One of the top 25 resorts in the Midwest* by Midwest Living Magazine. www.indianainns.com
They offer a full breakfast buffet and according to their site **the almost famous omelet chef**. I had a veggie with egg beaters, and it was wonderful...

Saturday, March 28, 2009

WATERCOLOR PAST




I used to quilt, when my eyes were better, and my patience...just a gathering, a collection from those days, watercolor pencil in my moly.

Saturday, March 21, 2009

first watercolor pencil work

A simple banana. I did this on a Canson 140 lb 5.5 x 8.5 watercolor journal, with prismacolor watercolor pencils. I found a niji waterbrush, and I do like working with it better than a regular watercolor brush and water. Seems like the water is more controlled.
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Today, I also joined a *Love my journal* online class, which runs for 21 days. It seems like everytime I tried to sign up it was always in progress. I am excited to start another 21 day adventure in art.

Sunday, March 15, 2009

different strokes from different folks

I have added this blog to my list of blogs. A picture is posted and artist submit their interpretation of it, its pretty interesting to see on others *see* the photo. I would like to try this.

Saturday, March 7, 2009

Prismacolor watercolor pencils

I used my 40% off coupon and splurged and bought a 12 pack of Prismacolor Watercolor pencils. I have been wanting to try them. Would have loved the 36 pack, but common sense prevailed. I played around a little with them today, nothing to post however, tried them on 140lb cold pressed, and am wondering if hot press may be the better way to go, being a smoother surface, and since I don't have any, for now, I won't know. I am just experimenting, so far I am not to fond of the pencil mark from the color, and I want to *not see it*, do I need a lighter hand or smoother paper..hmmmm. Obviously I shouldn't judge on my 1/2 hr experiment.

Sunday, March 1, 2009

Grandma's cups

This is a sketch of one of my grandma's tea cups. She had a quite a collection, that was collected through the years. She would board deer hunters from the city, and they would bring gifts to her, in the form of teacups, gram would also get them from family too for birthdays or Christmas. One day, many years ago, we were sitting around the big oak farm table, and her daughters thought they would pull a joke on her. Gram displayed her tea cups on shelves on the dining room wall. When she had left the room, her daughters took some of the cup and saucers down and put them on the table, so when gram came back into the room to pour coffee she would have a surprise. Grams tea cups were her pride and joy, so you can imagine this quiet gentle woman's surprise as she spotted this...she was very upset and could barely speak, *we are not using those cups* she said, clearly disturbed. I felt bad for her that they would do this knowing it would upset her, they got more enjoyment out of it than gram did.
I think gram has been gone now over 30 years....This small memory feels like it happened just yesterday.

Thing-a-day is over....

I may have not posted all of my 28 entries, on the days I didn't sketch I submitted a photograph. Since this blog is dedicated to sketching only I didn't want to post those entries here. I have completed my month of Saturdays in my downtown drawing class, it is going in a direction I didn't anticipate...pastels....I wanted to do a drawing of Rachael, my bosses daughter, and the next thing you know I am doing a pastel of her, I have never done pastels before. I have done, oils, acrylics, watercolor, not pastel...but I want to remain open to other forms of artistic expression...its just that, I keep wanting them to work in a way that they don't want to work in. It feels like a fight. I think I am ready to move into the finishing stages next week, and then I will get back into drawing, detailed drawing. My teacher does art in color so naturally he wants to move us into that direction, but I didn't expect it in my second class. I did find another interesting *learn to draw* site on the Internet last night. http://www.suite101.com/course.cfm/17130
It looks like it has a lot of good information. Since TAD is over I need to move on, so I will be hanging out there, and also try to be more active on http://groups.yahoo.com/group/everydaymatters/ ane in the meantime, continue to draw everyday....