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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.

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2021 Family Calendar

At the end of 2020 one of my final projects of the year was to create the 2021 family calendar. This one absolutely annihilated me. It is a tribute to the first sibling we have lost in my family.

I printed off the normal 8 for siblings and Mom, but I also printed off 5 for my brother Aaron’s children. Then every month I write each of them about the stories that are held in the photos of their Daddy and his childhood. It has been a hard year, but I will not regret that I did this.

  • Printed double-sided on 13×19 matte photo paper
  • This is year 16 of creating these and it will probably be my final. At this point, we can start reusing some of those I made before.

I continued to do some art after the first of the year because my nieces were begging me to continue teaching and coaching them, but I lost my spark for a number of months and am just beginning to get it back. So expect some fun posts as I catch up on what I have been doing.

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Finalizing Inktober

So Inktober almost went bust for me mid month when my brother passed, but I finally jumped back in on day 21 and did a few more pieces.

Here is my wrapup:

Day 6 – Rodent
Day 7 Fancy – this was a rare bird who showed up in our area – I was practicing ink washes and will watercolor this later
Day 8 Teeth – I added this to my Nature Journal since I heard the coyotes again behind the house.
Day 21 – Sleep – this was my re-entry into my creativeness after the loss of my brother. It seemed a nice, gentle way to get back to it. My cat and pointillism.
Day 23 – RIP – My brother, Aaron
Day 25 – Buddy – My brother Ron – we were buddies growing up on the farm as the closest to my age of the 7 of us.

I had to catch up on some Christmas commissions at this point, so I put my energy into those. I also was meeting once a week with a set of nieces who were participating with me, which I will share in another post.

One other thing that kept me involved is that I am an Admin on a Facebook group called Inktober SafeSpace where artists, young and old, can share their work without imagery depicting violence, hate, and sexually explicit material. The larger Inktober can trigger someone due to depictions of suicide and depression etc. Also, some of us simply do not like all that in-your-face art.

This is a place where people can safely have fun, share and not have to deal with the artists who are going for the shock factor, edginess, and trying to push the envelope of how disgusting they can be. Sometimes life is hard enough without having it in your face 24/7. We are a small group, but we certainly had fun this year.

All of this kept me Inktober-busy! I did enjoy the “season”.

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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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Rose-breasted Grosbeaks

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The Rose-breasted Grosbeak’s have been plentiful this season. I have my own photos, but a friend, Steve Bradley, took one of a male that truly inspired me. I used his photo for my painting and one of my own for the female.

First I practiced drawing them since their big old beaks were a new shape for me.

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Then I tried the male on my Mom’s Mother’s Day card/letter. I decided I liked that so well, I did the couple in my nature journal (the first image above.)

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Perpetual Nature Journal

Chickadee

I have begun a perpetual nature journal. However, I am an IT consultant and this week I was switched from many years working from a home office to 5 days smack in the middle of downtown Indy. What an adjustment. So this will curtail the amount of nature I am observing, but I still have the weekend bird count for Cornell University. Feeder birds may be the main pics until I can get out on a weekend.

Pigeons seen on my morning commute.
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Inktober Week 2

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This particular week I did a couple of prompts but mostly simply practiced mostly from my own photos except on the two specified. I have to retrospectively

 

#7 Enchanted was some quick gestures of a Carolina Wren that enchanted me on my hike at Ritchey Woods over the weekend.

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#8 is Frail – I was busy illustrating a comment on Facebook, so skipped this one and drew the hippie chicken above. However, I kept thinking of our frail ecosystem. Maybe I will revisit this word.

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# 9 – did not use a prompt – Whitetail Deer Photo reference – John Baughman – https://www.facebook.com/JustJohnsNature/

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#10 no prompt – Blackpoll Warbler Photo reference – Jining Han posted on Indiana Birdography

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#11 – no prompt – one of our bunnies that live in our wild wood. I called him Notch.

The remaining day was spent sketching with a pencil. I worked on a child’s face and also on Christmas ornaments over the weekend. I did do some quick gestures in ink that are in a random sketchbook somewhere.