Live sketching time! Score!

Yesterday was a BLUR of activity and I needed to focus, so I sadly had to leave my sketching kit at home. But, that certainly didn't stop me from firing off a few sketches of men in suits doing very important work. In some ways, lawyers are like the knights of Feudal society, I suppose. Some possess honor and valor and rescue the helpless for a fee. Some are villainous and greedy and make life miserable for others. Either way, they all do their best to out-do each other's armor and posture. I always feel like I am in a zoo observing wild animal territorial behavior when I am around a number of lawyers and I was able to capture some of that psychological positional jockeying in yesterday's tiny sketches.

In other news I am still waiting on the Watson-Guptill title "How to Paint with Colored Pencil", to come in at the library. While I keep visiting the library like a lovesick teenager hoping to see her crush, I did score some awesome books full of tutorial demonstrations. I am beginning to grow so convinced that the library does not list every book on the shelves in their online catalog. I can search for hours on a particular subject and turn up nearly nothing, but when I show in the library to return something, I leave with my arms FULL of creamy dreamy instructional guides. Such is the life of a Self-Taught artist determined not to break the bank on education this year.

Earlier this year I got my bachelors degree with a concentration in Christian Counseling and Fine Arts and I am convicted to build on that foundation. Right now I'm reading: Annette C. Compton's, "Drawing from the Mind and Painting from the Heart", Beverley Johnston's the "Complete Guide to Colored Pencil Techniques", and the Gildow and Benedetti Newton "Colored Pencil Solution Book". In essence, I am test-driving instructional guides and determining which are must-have references that further my artistic skills and which are self-promoting hype. Right now the publishers I dig are North Light, Watson-Guptill and David & Charles. Just a hint: When you can't find the title or subject matter you want in a library catalog, sometimes a search by publisher can yield a treasure trove of resources on the subject that may actually surpass the particular one you have in mind! It also doesn't hurt to be friendly with the library staff as they can be a huge help in finding titles that weren't on your radar.

In other networking news, I got the chance to pop in to C'ville Arts yesterday and get the lowdown on membership and talk to an artist that goes by the name "Flame Bilyue",

who uses colored pencil in her work. I'm still not so sure that's the right place for my work as they have wall art aplenty in there. The search for a venue goes on whilst I work toward developing a portfolio.

You can't imagine how lame and phony it feels to have to say "Sorry folks, no portfolio or samples of any kind to share yet . . .all my good art got stolen!" It's the truth, but it is very haunting to remember all the time-consuming effort put into my finest pieces and yet have nothing to show for them.

Well, Lord willing I will be empowered to make works that surpass even those dear departed ones that haunt my memories.

And when I do . . . to God be the Glory! I'm out!

The Beginning of the End

This home school year is starting to draw to a close slowly but surely. "Albert" has finished one of the first grade spelling texts that he was working in and "Jackie" has only 50 more lessons left in his math text. Oh the exciting finishes that march brings make fighting through the home school blues that are widely rumored to hit everyone hardest in February worthwhile.

With all this going on,

it has been hard to sneak in art work and I'm beside myself trying to make skin tones work without the colors I need. I have a feeling once I finally get them I'll find a way to work without them. Here is a value sketch I did for a sketch I did for a piece that I can't wait to work on more seriously.

I realized that with as little time as I have for art, it would behoove me to put some effort toward improving my sketching skills. (That and I already have all the tools I need for that!) I'm reading "Fast Sketching Techniques" by David Rankin. I like his style but I do kind of bristle at his "You won't be able to," and "don't expect to . . ." about the speed with which a finished drawing can be completed. I've always drawn fast and I don't think I can afford not to unless I want to wait around for all the kids to go off to college before I pick up a pencil!

Today I made a VERY quick sketch of my sweet kitty Conan. I don't

nor

mally sketch animals, but I guess that recent pencil study featured on Gurney's Journey piqued my interest.

To God be the Glory! I'm out!

Hectic day Sakura sketch

Facing what will probably be a hectic day, I decided to get in a quick sketch before the kids get their wits about them. I used my trusty (though very old) Sakura Pigment Brush to sketch a model from a relaxer ad. Relaxed hair has a horrible tendency to look like a blob, so I think I gave it a little life.

I'd like to play with this image again when I have more than 20 minutes. Learning from yesterday's mistakes, I'm loading up my sketch kit this morning before I hit the road. Teeny tiny pieces of paper make people think you're writing a note to yourself or a grocery list, not sketching unsuspecting by-standers!

May my day and yours bring s smile to the One who planned all of our days long before BlackBerrys existed! I'm out!

Back in the Saddle

After reading a blog post about making a "to-go" sketching kit, complete with 2.5X3.5 sized slips of paper to work on during lulls in outings, I had to give it a try today. Considering how long it's been since I did any kind of regular sketching, it wasn't too big of a failure. Lamentably, I forgot to include an eraser in my kit. Tortillons might not make a bad addition either. I haven't sketched like this since I got back from South America. Back then I had the luxury of a full-sized set up with handy pockets and different pads of paper and what not. These days any sketching needs to have the ability to be whisked quickly into my tote when the kids need me, or when an important phone call has to take front-burner. No one ever appreciates the simplicity of their life in any given moment until things get FAR more complicated.

Today's sketches were entirely in Prismacolor black colored pencil and no graphite. It was smooth like satin! But what I wouldn't give for a kneaded eraser and a larger range of grays from which to sketch. Acquiring grays will have to take a back seat to collecting a range of colors with which to render flesh tones.

For a first attempt at sketching on an Artist-trading-card sized surface, I'm relatively pleased. I started this sketch when I saw a child in black on a colorful inflatable slide and I was in the middle of creating the sketch from a moment's flicker of a pose . . .when the phone rang. Always with the phone ringing. Phones are the bane of my existence.

I sketched a second piece from a passer-by, but it came out very childish (which is ironic, because I was drawing a child) after another interruption jolted the mental picture out of my head. I spent a few minutes trying to recapture the pose, busily rendering the girl's purple three-tiered skirt to my own great satisfaction . . .only to see the girl run through again and see that the skirt had been BLUE and I'd bungled a whole host of other details as well.

I certainly can't say that today's artistic endeavors were without value as I started to integrate a host of new-found knowledge that I gleaned during recent months. Hopefully I'll have some time in the studio to freely explore and ponder these concepts more thoroughly before the month is out. Hello March!

- To God be the Glory! I'm out.

First week of Homeschool

Well - it is the 4th day of Official Full-Swing Homeschooling. I gotta make a blog to keep it all together - if I write it on paper the kids will notebook on it! LOL.

I'd say things went well. We started on our Sound of the Week curriculum, modeled off of www.letteroftheweek.com. I brought back some of my old stand-by teaching techniques from before the kids started Pre-K: When in doubt be loud!

Because our first sound was the short "a" sound, the kids got a kick out of screaming " AHHHHH!!!!!" each morning to say our sound of the week. We also have made some sign language progress! How did I know that with a house full of boys, starting with the sign for "eat" would be a sure winner!

Housework plodded along at a semi-decent pace, but what really went haywire this week so far was Mount Washmore, and the Princess of the Universe.

Little Sister JUST started crawling and she is at it with a vengance! All week long it's been "HEY! put that down! Wait, wait NO! Don't eat that! Don't rip the book! Mooooom! She knocked over my blocks!" She has become a holy terror!

I have decided I just HAVE to make a better system for laundry! It's not the washing and the drying that's a problem, it's where to put them while I run back and forth to the screams of "Mooom! Hee hit me!" and " Mooom, I can't do it!" "My pants is falling down!!!" (we're working on using "are" but it's a process!)

So this week I'm trying out the idea of temporary storage spots for sorted laundry. A home-away-from home for all those neatly folded things that end up in the laundry room for so long that their owners assume they are lost forever.

The other thing I learned was about geography: Some things need to be located near the learning area, others do NOT! Before school started, I spent long hours organizing school supplies into a near-by closet. Well it's not near-by ENOUGH. I learned you need to be able to grab a fresh pencil ASAP when a lead breaks, because the timer on a 5-year-old's attention span doesn't stop running when you dash away to the closet for more supplies!
I also learned 3-year-olds don't let anything just be "over there". If it is anywhere in eye-shot, it is by default more interesting than today's lesson. So even if the toy train has been in the same spot for 3 weeks, it is a SERIOUS point of interest if it is too near where we are learning.

So we've reconfigured, we're updating out space and methods, and we'll see how things go next week!

Today is our "Saturday" because we follow a weird schedule, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday. It helps to be able to go to Bible Study Thursday mornings :) So the afternoon is a scheduled video-game-fest!