After 2012

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Inktober Portrait

I am running way behind on posting to the blog! If you want to catch me in real time, I can also be found on Facebook or Instagram. Instagram has short process reels starting to appear also, as I am learning how to create them (and overcome my nerves!)

This year I am wanting to work more seriously on my portraiture. So I asked a coworker if I could draw his son, whom I met at a company BBQ, thus the company hat and keychain. He was such a delight to work on and my first Inktober piece. Nothing like warming up to the inks in the most intense way possible! When Jasper saw his picture he told his dad he wanted it on his wall. What a sweet compliment!

I did the entire piece with a pencil sketch, then this brush dipped in Higgins black waterproof ink (and a raccoon mug of water.) Again – Inktober was about working on the balance of tones and values with the ink. I saw myself progress as the month did. I doubt an artist every feels they have arrived, though, so I have learned to just accept where I am, knowing with each piece I am growing my skill.

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Tea Dying Paper

As a part of the Tanuary activities last month, I also tried some tea and coffee dying of watercolor paper to see how that works. I learned that either one works, you just need to leave it in the mix for a long time. I can not wait to find some time to watercolor on these papers.

Tea dying
Coffee – I can not remember now why I thought the grounds should be in it – I think it was to see if it left any darker marks. It did not.
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Tanuary 2022

Pencil work

Work was extra challenging in January, but I caught a few moments on the weekends to do several drawings on tan paper.

A quick charcoal piece of my brother and I riding on Dad’s back.
Quick ink sketch for the prompt “bike” – yeah, it really does not look like my brother and I, but we were the humans.
“Self” – Yep – need to work on my inking of faces!! I got out of practice.
Finished glass “door knob”
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Children’s Furniture Project

In April-May I began a massive clean out of my art studio. After over 40 years of collecting projects and resources, I have decided I have “been there, done that” and I know what I want to concentrate on from this point forward.

So nieces and nephews were the benefactors of all sort of fun things, but also, there were a few projects I really wanted family to have. While I donated a large amount of raw children’s furniture to a new church nursery, I held out a few pieces for my nieces and nephew. This was the result.

This table top was their Grandma’s farm with the chairs celebrating a childhood cat (a nod to their daddy – and Grandma still has cats on the farm) and the hummingbirds ever present in the summer.

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Watercolor Nature Journal

Practicing snow and shadows with the Mulberry tree behind our house

I did work on the nature journal a bit this past Winter/Spring. I love our birds and critters but this year we did not feed them. There was a scary disease going through this part of the country. Thankfully, I did not see it with our birds, but the DNR asked us to not feed them in case it was spreading.

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Farm Journal Watercolor Project

Quick sketch of our childhood farm in the 1980s

The kids continued to ask for more classes, so in February I sent them all watercolor paints, brushes and paper. We had loads of fun as I taught them how to use their new tools. In the meantime, I continued on with my own project of painting family memories. I am trying to get looser with my sketching, making it less of a detailed and frustrating project.

One of my favorite things is using old black and white photos from my Dad’s family farm. I want to amass a large group of these. Maybe a picture book with stories in the future.