Laurelines

A couple of sketchy babies

Abby, seven months old, napping with her nose tucked under her(eviscerated) teddy bear's arm.

Hank, eight weeks old, believing that discretion is the better part of valor, keeps his thoughts to himself.

Look at these radishes

You might as well, you know. You've got to look at something.

Every day I thank you...

...the title of one of the songs the Pat Metheny Trio played in concert last night. And I have the wonderful artist Cin of Learning Daily to thank for her elegant drawings of musicians---they inspired me to take my sketchbook to the performance. I could barely see what I was doing in the darkened auditorium, so it was fun to come home and finally look at what I did. 

PS: Pat Metheny's hair really IS two feet wide and curly as can be.

Rough and unpolished,  and therefore VERY unCinlike, here are my sketches:

Pat Metheny on guitar

Christian McBride on bass

Antonio Sanchez on drums

David Sanchez on the saxophone

Three-Part Funny Face: BCF #15

To answer this week's Blind Contour Friday funny self-portrait challenge, I drew from a photo of me as a baby. That face was pretty funny, I think you'll agree.  The drawing you see here, first with a Micron pen and then with watercolor added, was my third attempt at blind contouring it. With the first two I was so off spatially, you wouldn't have recognized it as a baby--I looked more like a haggis with two giant black craters.

For links to a whole gallery of funny faces, check this out, Niff and Sutter's fabulous sketchblog.

7 am fountain, Meadowmont

 

Since my last trip to France, I've been looking at my town with different eyes.  Of course, I'd seen this fountain before, but I never thought to draw it.  This morning, though, I did. Still shivering just a little from the early hour of sketching en plein air.

Sunday morning, 8 and 10am

I realize these are anticlimactic after the red knickers, but I can't help it. Life has its ups and downs.

8 am: A little shrub growing in ,and therefore reflected in, a pond near our house. Usually, I'm up earlier and the pond is shrouded in mist. Not today.

10 am: Sunflowers, end of season. Ink and Chinese brush.

Glimpses of knickers

We interrupt this regularly scheduled Blind Contour Friday  programming for the following public service drawing:

To the Brit who reached my site while googling '*glimpses of knickers,' this one's for you.

(I hate to admit how much fun it was to paint and draw red lace! )

* from this comment of months ago: Wow! Fantastic drawing, and I love that bud with the tiny frill of petal just showing - like a glimpse of red frilly knickers! ;-)

Sweet gum obsession! BCF #14

For a long time, I've been attracted to these prickly globes and I don't know why.

Here's my initial blind contour drawing of sweet gum balls, made this morning. I've had these on my drawing table all week and those little seeds are all over the place, more so each day:

Here they are with some color added by me (while looking at the paper):

Here's a detail from an OLD painting, so you can see more what they look like in person.

For far less seedy and less prickly Blind Contour Friday submissions, check this out, the superb sketchblog of  Niff and Sutter, my favorite evil geniuses.

What do you think?

Here are three versions of the same subject, drawn by three different artists.

This is Amanda's drawing.

This is Wally's.

And this is mine.

Some of us are thinking about making a joint book of each of our versions of the same subjects. I think it would be so interesting--- do you?

Let it bleed

One of the fun things about getting together with other artists is the sparking of ideas about mediums, content, style--all sorts of stuff. This weekend I watched Wally draw with a felt-tip pen and I realized I hadn't used one of those since 1989 (October 14th, if you must know.) So this morning, not quite awake, I tackled the things I saw on the kitchen countertop. I call this magnum opus 'Morning Coffee with Turquoise Beads.' Note to self: don't try to draw ellipses until fully awake. PS to self: felt tip pens bleed mightily. Plan accordingly.