Today is snowy and quiet. And it's Friday! Friday is my favorite day of the week. John and I will watch a movie or two tonight and stay up really late. I'll sleep in of course, but John will be up at the crack of dawn. Above are some random photos that I thought I would post.
Today almost felt like Spring, so I did some Spring cleaning. I'm not fooled though. I know Winter isn't finished with us yet, but it sure is nice to enjoy warmer temperatures while we can.
Some new earrings I made while the wind howled outside my window. Available for sale in my Etsy store.
This is a drawing I did a few years ago of my son, John, with his finger up to his face as if deciding what he's going to do next. I used to draw my family a lot when I was learning to draw. Sometimes from life, sometimes from photos. I liked drawing them when they were asleep because they didn't move around much. Drawing the cats and the gerbils (long gone) was always fun too.
Here's a couple of mixed media/collage pieces that I did for a friend. He likes to drink a certain alcohol beverage that has a square cap that I thought would be perfect to make art on. They measure 2" by 2".
Making earrings is a fun and creative way for me to relax. It doesn't take hours and hours of my time and I feel a sense of accomplishment when I haven't created any artwork because I have created something. Available for sale on Etsy.
I thought I would share with you the progress of a watercolor that I am about to begin. I snapped a photo when I was at the park during the summer and I drew it on to watercolor paper. I'm interested in the contrast of the swan against the dark, rough stone in the background. Stone is something that I love to paint and I can't wait to get started. I'll start with the background and work my way forward.
When I was teaching myself to draw, I always drew from real life or from my own photographs. I couldn't resist this image of a woman I saw in a glamour magazine because of the strong contrast between light and dark and the many folds of the blanket, so I drew her. The line you see going across the drawing is where I taped two pieces of sketch paper together. Although it looks like it, her back is not hairy. :)
This is a graphite and charcoal drawing of my family. They are sitting on a bench in the park. I'm not a hundred percent happy with this, but it is only my second time using charcoal in a serious drawing so I won't beat myself up about it. I really enjoyed using the charcoal because I could get a really nice dark very easily and I could also cover a large area much quicker than graphite. I covered the background with charcoal and then I used an eraser to draw the trees. It's a cool technique and I like how it looks. It's almost like scratchboard.
This is one of the first watercolors that I ever did. I couldn't get the foreground the way I wanted it so I kept scrubbing it out and repainting. I read somewhere that watercolor was unforgiving and it was hard to fix mistakes. I learned that with a little patience and a stiff brush and some water you can remove most of the paint. Here's an example:
When I completed this painting I didn't like the sky, so I scrubbed all the paint out and
this is the result. It changes the atmosphere of the painting completely. Pretty cool!
The house in this painting burned to the ground shortly after my husband took some photos of it. I believe I wrote about it in an earlier post when I used its transparent image in a mixed media/collage piece. I remember when we were at the property, many cats were walking to and from the house. They must have been strays that had taken shelter there. I only hope that they had all gotten out when the house started to burn.
