Bruges

I'm a bad blogger. Sorry to u folks who signed up to follow me, then got nothing but dead air. I instagram all the time and cross load to twitter and fb, so u can go follow me there for a lot more content. Not sure why the blog doesn't grab me any more.
But anyway, here's a grim version of a bridge in Bruges, sketched from a pic in a book. I really need to practice cause my perspective is dreadful.

Postcard sketching

Still slogging away on DLP2015 but a few weeks behind now. Ah well. Sometimes the prompts just don't grab me. But I have these old postcards sent to my mom's mother and decided to draw one of them. I clearly don't posses the sketching gene but it will serve the purpose of reminding me of the real postcard from 1912.

altoids tin

Ran out of fruit to draw so did the Altoids tin. Need to move on to flowers or at least stuff from outside cause it appeals to me more and I take more care.

sketching a la Jane La Fazio

I signed up for Jane's sketching book class and lesson two was yesterday, painting fruit. Didn't have time till today, then got a lot done.

I do enjoy painting persimmons. This one is not bad.
Shadow is too big, didn't occur to me to cur it off with the frame.
Shadow really was that big, from the low morning light.
Wrote a haiku. I ate tons of persimmons last fall but this year
Got a rash around my mouth and it's the only new thing I'd been eating.
It's an unsightly rash, so I'm laying off persimmons just in case.
Bummed.

Next up was a lime, which didn't excite me from the start
cause there just isn't much happening with a lime.
The cross section is better but now the pulp areas look too dark.
Ah well.

So then I tried a banana and I'm really pleased with it.
Was using the overhead light so the shadow is tight and dark.
Coming up with a type face for the words and drawing
a fun frame are as enjoyable as the fruit part.

persimmon season

I didn't even know I liked persimmons until last autumn when I tried one at the farmer's market. I loved the solid crunch and different flavor. I ate them two or three a day until they were gone from the market, and missed them, like I miss nectarines when they're out of season. So a couple weeks ago they were back and I stocked up that day and each Sunday since, eating them diced into my cereal, sauteed in butter, brown sugar and chili sauce, and just chunked up as a snack.

I'm taking Jane La Fazio's art journal sketchbook class online and the first lesson was this past Sunday. Not quite as much to it as I was hoping for but I expect it'll get busier and then I'll be complaining that I can't keep up. Never happy. I haven't sketched in a while, since whenever I last posted one, so I grabbed a persimmon and spent about 20 minutes doing this sketch.

This is a sketchbook I made from my mom's old pad of paper, prolly from the early 1940s. I instagrammed the book but don't think I blogged about it yet. The paper is cold pressed and very textured. I had to work to get decent paint coverage.

I'm still pretty happy with my work and hope to improve a bit with Jane's influence and instruction. There should be a fair amount of sketching posts during the next 6 weeks of class.

Not sure what I was thinking when I did the date.
Maybe the British method of putting the day first.
Anyway it was Nov 9th.

more dog park sketching

Hit the dog park again on Monday and while Maggie ran her legs off, I sketched the trees in front of my bench. Didn't have my paints with me so finished it off this evening using memory and artistic license.

I've realized that I'm a lazy sketcher. I don't wanna scribble in enough pine needles beneath the trees to make it actually look like pine needles. So after I did the tree on the left, I didn't even bother with the tree on the right, but it needs it so I may add them in.

My shadows need work too. It all needs work but I'm enjoying it and the more I do, the less I care about the small stuff like pine needles. And maybe shadows. 

So my work will prolly always look something like this and amazingly enough, I'm ok with that. Which is a huge step forward from where I was before Mary Ann's class.

I got impatient and painted over the letters before the ink was dry. <sigh>