Laurelines

Thinking ahead

One of my ongoing projects for this year is to get better at drawing faces. I'm aiming for specificity of feature and expression without going into obsessive detail. Here's today's sketch, one of a series that is recorded in my Cafe Drawings album:

Starting this week, a friend and I are going to hire a model so I can do head drawings and she can do the figure. (I'm sure I'll do the figure, too.) It'll be fun for me to see what develops---and I'll record the steps along the way here.

Whose feet these are I think I know

Writers are told to write about what they know. That rule doesn't apply to us visual types, but sometimes what you know is what there is. Over the years my feet have made countless appearances in sketchbooks and journals---my feet in doctors' waiting rooms, my feet on the beach, my feet on the bed, my feet nude, my feet shod. Sketching your own feet is an activity similar to a cat chasing its tail, only moderately more decorous. You can do it discreetly, you can do it for free, you can do it without thinking. You have a moment, you have your sketchbook and a pencil, you're bored---  and there they are, those trusty appendages.

Today I prepare to have my feet unveiled after last week's surgery to correct overzealous metatarsals (for this condition, thanks are due to my forbears and, I suspect, to years of running) and I wonder, whose feet ARE these? Will I recognize these tootsies, with their newly slim silhouettes, their scars, their invisibly ( I hope) embedded screws?  You know, I'd grown accustomed to their look.

Miles of piles

Sidelined at home for a few days, I'm catching up on some drawing challenges. We were to render objects in some corner of our houses that had piled up. It was hard to chose from among my myriad of cascading object formations, but I focused on my bedside table, which is in worse shape than normal, due to said homeboundness.  Where's that delete button? 

Later: Found this pile from a sketch made earlier in the year. Messy, messy.

The green fuse

I normally have three greens on my acrylic palette: permanent light green, viridian and pthalo green. These are all pretty garish and would never occur in nature. Today I mixed my four yellows with my four blues to make new greens and then threw my yellows and greens together to make...yellowish greens! So now I have a plenitude, a host, an embarrassment of greens---and just in time, too. The green world is cranking up all around.

Sunday breakfast at Cafe Chez Nous

Another drawing challenge from online drawing group: your favorite meal.

I love to travel and eat in fancy places, and not-so-fancy places. I love foie gras, truffles, oysters, delicious desserts, uber-chocolate chocolate, lentils de Puy, champagne, the Ritz, but my FAVORITE meal of all is ...Sunday breakfast at our house, starring Chef Husband. There's nothing like fresh poached eggs and fruit from our local farmers' market, really good bread toasted with real, real butter (unstinted, I might add) and, once in a while, market bacon. Prepared by a master chef of the domestic variety.  Oh, and fresh squeezed orange juice (only please don't dip your paintbrush in yours, as I did in mine this morning.) Voila, a meal for the centuries.

Images from the yellow world

I've been studying color lately , in an attempt to enlarge my palette.  On the subject of yellow, here are two slender snippets. The irises are from my garden, sketched quickly in the cool of this morning. The rose mix is from a bouquet my nice husband gave me.

Everyday Matters drawing challenge: Specs (and case)

I participate in an online drawing group, in which a member suggests to the group a weekly subject for sketching. This week it is glasses.  (Why did I think my 20/15 eyes were impervious to aging?? They weren't. Of course. These eyeglasses work well because they are frameless. Others I've tried make me feel hemmed in. )

Sketches from the calm between two storms

OK, not storms exactly, but two frenetic periods in my life. Anyway, here are a few sketches from Charleston and NYC. (Resolved: to take solo trips for drawing purposes only. Someday.)  [Have also posted these in sketchbook album. I think the format there is larger, not sure. Anyway, there are descriptions of the individual sketches there.]

Mural accomplished!!!

Finally!! So, here it is. Some of the centers of some of the photos are washed out a bit by the flash, but you get the idea.   The blank part of one wall will have a piece of furniture covering it. I'm worn to a threadpaper, but satisfied. I think it looks OK.

It's happening again! Mural will be finished Friday!

  OK, got the problem solved. Painted out the whole bad section and put in sea holly instead. Good texture, unusual form, calm color so doesn't compete with dahlias, etc. So now I have to finish painting dahlias, fine tune everything and add a goldfinch somewhere. This will probably be my last mural post until it's all done. Which has to happen on Friday. Whew.