Sketchbook

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Grandma’s Kitchen

In January I love to pull out my tan paper and practice on the toned surface with white ink. However, I tend to be recovering from a 3 month push on Inktober and then holiday painting and crash instead.

This year I did do an image of Grandma’s kitchen. She had steps leading down into it and I remember sitting on those steps with this very view many times as a child. I never thought about it, but she had an old stove, and then the new one in the corner. But with the huge extended family, both stoves were put into service during the holidays. I think of how small that kitchen was. Her whole house, really. And she raised 10 kids and a lot of grandkids there!

I also did a tribute to Cassidy, a little mini-hini that ran with the mustangs at Skydog Sanctuary. He passed and it was a great loss to even those of us who never met him in person. This made me want to spend more time drawing horses and donkeys!

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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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Tanuary 2021

Henry Louis Gates, Jr. from the Finding Your Roots (PBS) show

I like to work on a tan sketchbook in January – although I was too busy with nieces and our weekly zoom coaching sessions to do the full Tanuary challenge on social media. We had a lot of fun, even so.

I challenged the kids to use different surfaces, including cardboard pieces and talked about charcoal, pencil, crayon, pen etc. It was good drawing practice for all involved.

Inktober Week 1
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Inktober Week 1

Day 1: Fish – Belted Kingfisher in my Nature Journal

It is Inktober! This year I am taking the course from Sktchy: Inktober2020 Portrait Challenge. I am not planning to stick to only portraits, but I am going through each day’s course and using what I am learning.

Day 2: Wisp (me at the age of 2 – and that wispy hair). A tentative use of a light ink wash for the first time, as well as using a brush pen.

My main focus this month is learning portraiture. Portraiture has terrified me my entire art life. It is time to lay that ghost.

Day 3: Bulky (for the bulky lines and sticks.)

Day 1 of the classes I learned how to create ink delivery systems out of sticks from the back yard and dipping ink. It was so much fun! I thought Ruth Bader Ginsberg’s image lent itself well to this style. This was such a freeing experience.

Another one for Bulky is an ink wash of a Dark-eyed Junco. I am not yet sold on ink washes. The light ones I love, but the heavier ones, I have not yet found my comfort.
Day 4: Radio – blind drawing

6 of my nieces have joined me this year. We zoom once a week to look at what we are doing and I give them one assignment a week. This week was to do a blind drawing and then I also have to do it. I forgot how much fun some of these fundamental drawing exercises are! I hope they can cut loose and just enjoy their pens.

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Bandits

This is Notch – I think she may be a first time mother. She has at least 2 babies so she got bold enough to come up to the deck. It seems they get hungry about this time of year. I also see them in the deep winter when the snow is thick. Otherwise, they only visit at night. How do I know? My tomatoes growing on my second story deck keep disappearing.

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Nest Building

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I watched a Cooper’s Hawk wrestle with a huge stick that had a smaller one hooked to it.  When he finally got them untangled, he ended up with the short stick and appeared quite disgruntled about it. He tossed it down and left, at that point, and went up into the tree and started wrestling with another branch. It was very entertaining.

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