Almost done!!

Broken wrist ~ all better

I haven't posted all summer because of a broken wrist.  but, Yay! the cast is off and I'm feeling a lot better.  Although my muscles aren't as good as new yet.  I have a hand therapist helping me through the process of getting my right hand back to its original working order.  Ouch!  It takes longer for those of us that are a little older.  I did take a road trip with a friend to Washington and back at the end of July.  Lots of fun!!!!!

Castle Crags is in Northern California off the I-5

Somewhere along the Oregon coastline.

Breakfast with old friends

      I love flamingos!  I have never decorated my lawn with a plastic one, or my walls with a painting of one though.  I just think they are beautiful and graceful creatures. 
   
      I had breakfast with old friends who are also my best painting buddies yesterday.  It's been a long time since we all got together and we decided to do a watercolor painting.  I was on a roll and couldn't stop myself.  So, 5 hours later..... Here she is, or he.  She will be 20x24 after I crop her.

I like to take classes to see how others teach.  This snow scene is from one of those classes.  I'm teaching K-3rd graders art and so I keep up on the lessons myself so that I can see good and not so good methods of teaching.  Below I really played with color and used tissues to blot, lifting some color while also leaving some white.  Dramatic, eh?  It's even more so in person. A very fun class!

I scanned it in two halves .

Reminds me of Hunger Games.

Currently working on...

This is a really tiny photo, taken from my phone.  This is what I am working on right now at Deb's.  That's Spanish moss growing on the branches above and vines are climbing up the foreground tree.  I'm having a lot of fun with it and I'm going to try to get it finished for a show I'm doing in Morgan Hill in May at the Guglielmo Winery for their annual "Bottle Your Own Wine Event".

Last two poses from the life drawing class.

For this 20 minute pose I decided to work quickly with sketchy lines.

This was such an interesting view and I took the whole 20 minutes trying to be more precise.  I wish we had more time. 

We started this day with a contour drawing.  I drew from left to right, in one continuous line.  The woman on the left is wearing a glove, because the charcoal is so messy.  That's why her hand looks so funny.  We had to work quickly and when the time is up, we have to stop. Therefore, no legs. :)

 This model was strong, and even though he only had to hold this pose for 1 minute he was shaking toward the end of that minute.

Look at that!!!  Our teacher made us draw with our left hand, if right handed, and right hand if a lefty.  Everyone did a pretty good job.  I was amazed.  She said that drawing with your 'other' hand helps your creative right brain to kick in.  She was right.  After this exercise many of the students in the class did the rest of their drawings with their left hand.  Including me when I felt that I got stuck. 

Warm ups!

Looks like a dancing boxer......

The model brought some props, like this stool, to class this day. 

This was my favorite of his poses.  Too bad it was only a 30 second drawing. I still really like it.  Proud as a Peacock!

For each class one of our warm ups is to draw one of the other students across the room in a cross contour manner, we could only look at our paper 50% of the time and could not lift our pencil.  Next time I will add some photos of the 20 minute drawings.

Happy Leap Day!! and, More from my life drawing class:

Today we had to do a cross contour drawing of our hand.  Meaning I couldn't pick up my pencil at any time but, I was allowed to look at my paper.  We only had a few minutes and we had to pick this pose.

Reducing an image to the least amount of shapes with the broad side of a charcoal stick.  I think this helps with size and placement issues. 

Here are 4 more 1 minute energy drawings.  I'm trying to see flowing lines through my subjects and added the spinal curve to many of these like in the one above on the bottom left. 

With this cross contour drawing, again we could not pick up our charcoal, we had to use one of the students across the room for our subject.  I finally feel like all the contour and cross contour drawings are helping me actually see the subject.  I think the likeness of this woman is one of my better ones to date.  I've drawn people before, but couldn't get the my representation to look like the person I was trying to draw.

I took 6 weeks of Life Drawing classes.

 Of course I don't think I'm allowed to post most of the work I did in class, but, I wanted to share some of it here on the blog.  We started each class with 10 one minute poses.  Above is too realistic for what the teacher was looking for.  She wanted an "energy" drawing, so in the drawing below I made more of a gestural swirl with my pencils.

 Above and below are 3 minute contour drawings where we couldn't look at the paper and couldn't pick up our pencils at any time while drawing.  I was surprised they turned out looking like anything with all the fat legs and skinny arms and such.  I'm happy!!

Happily painting with the kids!

I'm spending so much time preparing art lessons or teaching, taking classes too.  So I haven't been over here much.  Hop on over to the Biggest Fridge in the World, here, and see what we have been up to. 

Happy Valentine's Day!!!!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Collage

I took a class on collage, and we had papers, fibers, even plastic to work with and used gel medium to paste it all to a small 8x8 wrap around canvas.  This looks pretty close except for the greens.  They are greener in person.  The gel medium is great!  It has effectually adhered everything, even the little rubber bands to the canvas.  I was worried in the beginning about items falling off.  But, no need, the stuff is great.

Pretend Virtue

     If you could live your life so that it served you, instead of you serving everyone else, what would that look like?  And I am not talking about living selfishly, but, if you didn't have to worry about what others thought of you, and could do the things you need to do to meet your goals and aspirations or dreams, without having to stop to cook your teenager a meal, what would your life look like?  I was asked this question in a book I am reading, "The Artists Way" and it is something I have to think about.  Really think and decide what that would mean for me.  I don't know yet.  But, I am going to think on it.  I titled this post "Pretend Virtue" after one of the headings because I tend to deprive myself and take care of others desires rather than take care of my own.  When I let what others will think of me stop me from drawing or painting or going on that artist's retreat, it may look virtuous, but it is pretend. But, I have to be a good wife, mom and friend, right?  How would your life be different?

Change

     What an emotional day yesterday.  I went to a service at the San Jose Giants Municipal Stadium.  Members of the Military, Police Dept., Fire Dept., Emergency responders, the city council and  Mayor Reed were there and the family members of one of the victims of the Colorado flight that went down.  Three pastors from three of the local churches took part too.  People had written poems, a song, and prayers for the memorial. We saw the dreaded videos of that terrible day, and a young man in uniform played taps.  An ABC 7 news woman, Karina, was the MC and she did a fantastic job. Afterwards they handed everyone a bag lunch and then some people made a film as tribute on youtube to thank all of the heroes who risked and/or lost their lives on that day that changed the world, you can view it here   .

Never Forget!