.....from Maine

The Sketchbook Project.

2010-08-15T16:24:00.003-04:00

It's coming to Portland MAINE!! NOT Oregon. Yay!!
And I'm going to have a sketchbook in it.
The sketchbook arrived a few weeks ago - and it still empty. Not many things are more daunting than an empty sketchbook....

More from cartooning class 4

2009-07-02T21:18:00.008-04:00

It's been raining here for weeks. There are slugs everywhere. I found a couple of knitting patterns for slugs. Naturally, I drew some slugs.

More work on having body parts in foreground and background. Not bothering to erase structural lines so I have them for reference later.

Wondered how to draw a hand doing something. Teacher said - put something in your hand and draw it. So I did.

Trying to draw my husband, who has a very full beard. Initially the one on the left had lots of straight hairs. I wasn't happy with either one. The teacher said not to draw where color is going to be. I didn't understand so he outlined where beard would be to be filled with color later. (I erased all the hairs) That had never occurred to me before. I usually try to show color via shading. This is different. I'm liking it. Tomorrow: backgrounds!

More from cartooning class

2009-06-15T18:34:00.008-04:00

More from cartooning class. Funny animals (the monkey is the teacher's creation) (the teacher is Sam Hill) Needed more practice with mouths. Then we did entire bodies - with hands forward and then in motion. I've left the skeleton lines in for my own future reference.

I'm stunned that I drew people that actually look human!

EDM 176 - Summer Islands

2009-06-07T21:50:00.004-04:00

The island on the right of this picture....

Is the same island on the left of this picture

Nothing feels more like summer than water and sailboats. These islands are pretty far off, as are the sailboats. I wanted to practice showing distance and not being so detailed.

EDM 192 - Something that floats

2009-06-07T21:48:00.005-04:00

Sitting on my friend's porch, I kept trying to capture the boats I was seeing, even though they kept shifting (or sailing) about. I'm getting a little quicker. Trying to work on shading based on what I see.

EDM 29 Architecture - a dock

2009-06-07T21:45:00.002-04:00

Still on Chebeague Island. My friend's place is right next to the marina. This is the dock. It's not quite right but I did my best. It is somewhat of an architectural marvel - wood and rocks seem somewhat jumbled but it seems to be steady as the Rock of Gibralter.

EDM 14 - What you see when you get up - sometimes

2009-06-07T21:41:00.004-04:00

I was visiting a friend on Chebeague Island over the weekend and this is what I saw every morning. In fact every time I looked, night or day, that as pretty much the scene except with different lighting. This a.m. at 420 - there was a pink and purple sunrise. Last night - a full moon. Today full sunshine. Friday, foggy.

Drawing the boats was quite a challenge - they kept moving.....

EDM 33 - Eyes plus

2009-06-07T21:31:00.008-04:00

In May I started taking a cartooning class at AC Moore taught by Sam Hill. Our first homework assignment was to draw eyeballs. Above is one of the 5 or so pages of eyeballs I drew. In the 2nd class he had us draw heads and eyes. Then expressions with no heads. Then we went on to heads tilted every which way. Cartooning is pretty fun.

EDM 33 - Eyes - and more

2009-06-07T21:28:00.002-04:00

I've been taking a cartooning class at AC Moore with Sam Hill. One of our first homework assignments was to practice eyes. Below is one of the 5 or so pages of cartoon eyeballs I drew. Plus, heads with eyes and expressions with no heads.

EDM #206 "We call it....."

2009-01-07T22:53:00.005-05:00

This was wicked fun! I got a bit carried away, as you can see. There's more writing than drawing, but this is about words afterall.

The little blob to the left of the Redemption Center building is a bag of soda cans.

Reid State Park, Maine

2008-07-24T20:27:00.002-04:00

A distant point of land

Some rocks just below where we were sitting.

A guy sitting on some rocks a little ways away.

My husband and I went to Reid State Park yesterday. We like to sit on the rocks and watch the water and birds and people. I took my sketchbook along and did 3 pictures using a ball point pen. I started with a micron pen but it was so windy the ink dried up before it hit the page.

#3 is the first time I stuck a person in a picture. This guy held still long enough for me to sketch him in quickly.

Real rocks are more difficult to draw than imaginary rocks.

Award!

2008-07-18T23:04:00.004-04:00

Thank you very much John P. for this award!

Imagine my surprise when john.p at http://john-alookin.blogspot.com/ told me he gave me this award for my blog. I haven't posted in ages and my drawing is so......in need of further practice! I'm pleased and the timing is great. I have a significant birthday next week and have been feeling old and decrepit (from time to time anyway).

The rules of acceptance are:

1. Put the logo on your blog. 2. Add a link to the person who awarded you. 3. Nominate 7 other blogs. 4. Add links to those blogs on yours. 5. Leave a message for your nominees on their blogs.

So, I nominate the following blogs for this award because they make me happy when I look at them.

juj at http://everythingiscontextual.blogspot.com/

jeff (trout bum) at http://drawingflies365.blogspot.com/

casey at http://caseytoussaint.wordpress.com/

doug at http://douglasthayer.blogspot.com/

woolgathering at http://www.elizabethperry.com/woolgathering/

andrea joseph at http://andreajoseph24.blogspot.com/

lin at http://viewfromtheoak.blogspot.com/

I've been away from blogging (and drawing) for a bit but I'm reinspired. Thanks John.p

ED in May 12-14

2008-05-18T15:59:00.003-04:00

#12 Birdhouse nailed to the side of the barn at Nezinscot Farm in Turner. Done from a photo taken last summer.

#13 A sheep peeking out from the window of a van. Drawn from a photo take spring of 2006 at Sheepfest in Denmark, Maine. It was the annual local sheep shearing. Three unshorn sheep take up the entire back of a pickup truck. Three shorn sheep take up less space than one unshorn sheep.

#14 Colored Pencil. I felt like playing with letters and coloring. So I did.

EDinMay 9, 10, and 11

2008-05-13T22:20:00.004-04:00

Day 9: I spend a lot of time drawing large things smaller. This time I wanted to try drawing a small thing bigger. So we have a gigantic paperclip. Tried to pay attention to the reflections on the paperclip but it's awfully narrow.

Day 10: A Clothes pin. 'H' added after the fact. That's what happens when the mind goes faster than the pen.

Day 11: My trusty Boy Scout knife. Had it since I was 10. Girl Scout knives didn't hold a sharp edge worth a darn. This one has seen a lot.

All done with brown micron pen.

EDinMay 7 & 8

2008-05-11T14:30:00.003-04:00

Shirley suggested that I should love my shoeblob. She made a good point, so here it is. It did make me laugh after all!

And also here are the bad scissors (they are bad because they don't cut worth beans).

Thank you Shirley. :)

EDinMay 5 & 6 (and 7 & 8 sort of)

2008-05-10T22:19:00.007-04:00

Day 5 - whimsical houses. Those were done in brown micron pen.

Day 6 - a binder clip that was holding open the sketch book. Used a pilot razor point I think.

Day 7 and 8 were.....not good: lopsided scissors and shoe blobs.

I'm not givig up though! Well, maybe I'll give up drawing shoes.

EDinMay - three days worth plus TWO challenges

2008-05-04T22:30:00.005-04:00

EDinMay #2: Last summer I took a bunch of photos at the granite yard. This is one of them. They do all sorts of keen things with the granite there.

EDM 165 and EDinMay #3 - the front of our house. This is also from a photo - it was raining and there aren't leaves yet in reality and I didn't feel like drawing or ignoring trunks and branches. The house doesn't tilt - I couldn't get rotate to work in photo editor. The house is dark brown. The trees are assorted greens. The roof is blue. An aside: we had 4" of rain Tuesday, it rained all weekend and we STILL have snow.

EDM 41 and EDinMay #4: a landmark of your town. My town doesn't exactly have a landmark, but Moody's Diner is pretty famous state-wide so I thought that'd suffice.

EDM 166 - fish AND Every Day in May #1

2008-05-01T22:53:00.004-04:00

I collect knife rests. Then I discovered chopstick rests - which I thought would serve well as knife rests too (and vice versa). The above is a ceramic fish chopstick/knife rest. This is the 2nd attempt at drawing it. The first was in blue ball point pen and was not good. Thought I'd share the better one. This one is done in 0.5 pencil and finger - for smudging. This also doubles as my first Every Day In May drawing.

There may be more fish.......

EDM 163 Playing card

2008-04-02T20:56:00.002-04:00

I have a deck of cards from Colonial Williamsburg. Here is the king of diamonds. It's a little off, but all in all not bad. The backs of the cards are blank so nothing to draw there.

EDM 18 redux

2008-04-02T20:49:00.003-04:00

We live on a hill. All I see out our back sliding door is snow and trees and the dug well thingie. Sometimes there are deer sleeping in the protected area under some trees. The snow pile from snow that slid off the roof is still 5' high or so. We have a pile like that out the front sliding door too.

The only spots we see dirt are some areas of the driveway. Usually it takes until May for all the snow to go away. This year we'll be luck if it's all gone in time for July 4. I am sick of snow. I'm also surprised at how excited I am to see dirt. Hope I can handle the excitement of seeing green vegetation.

Medicine Cabinet - finally

2008-04-02T20:38:00.003-04:00

Last summer I got Danny Gregory's book Creative License and began reading it. When I got to the part about drawing the inside of the medicine cabinet I didn't and so I didn't keep reading either. I finally got back to it and am really glad I did. While the composition of this drawing pretty much sucks, the point is - I did it. And I finished reading the book and am very inspired. After a very, very long winter of vegetating, I am very inspired.

EDM 72 Draw somewhere new

2008-01-13T18:00:00.000-05:00

While waiting for someone in a parking lot I drew some of the stuff I was seeing - cars (gassing up, fooding up), the store's sign, some puddles. Things are randomly placed and not as I was seeing them.

More rock doodles

2008-01-13T17:59:00.001-05:00

I'm addicted to drawing rock doodles. My husband says if I can draw rocks I can draw potatoes. Maybe I'll try that next. I dunno though, all those potato eyes.....

EDM 5 Bed

2008-01-13T17:56:00.000-05:00

Hotel bed at the Hyatt in Atlanta. I was at a conference. It was a nice bed. Lots of pillows. Not a lot else to draw in a hotel room.

EDM 1 Shoes

2008-01-13T17:53:00.000-05:00

Two shoes really. I was at a conference in Atlanta and at the end of the day took my shoes off in the middle of the floor and was too exhausted to bother about moving them. So, I drew them. Was too pooped to go into much detail. In fact, I fell asleep with the pen in my hand.

Spreading the joy

2008-01-03T12:26:00.000-05:00

I gave my 9 year-old nephew his first sketchbook for Christmas. I guess he has it nearly half full already - he's drawing people and landscapes and helicpoters, to name a few. My brother gave him a perspective lesson and he caught on right away.

Wish he lived closer so I could see his drawings....

Far Fur! Challenge #44 - a Moose

2007-10-01T23:59:00.000-04:00

More homework from Kate Johnson's watercolor texture class - fur. Far fur and close fur. I really like moose. Even though this one doesn't have a rack, it's still a moose. This was done with a 'travel' water color set on fake moleskin paper. Painted while overlooking the ocean from a camp (aka cabin) on Chebeague Island, Maine.

#119 Rocks!

2007-09-13T00:23:00.000-04:00

This one is NOT based on a photo at all but straight from my head. I think I'm finally getting the hang of the watercolor painting thing. Yay!

When we travel outside of Maine, I miss seeing rocks. (unless we're in New Hampshire)

EDM #77 Something cold

2007-09-13T00:14:00.000-04:00

The water here is VERY cold. This is Smalls Falls near Farmington, Maine. The painting was originally done for Kate Johnson's watercolor texture class. I'm including the reference photo and the reworked version of the painting.

EDM #18 - the view from a window

2007-08-29T23:21:00.000-04:00

Another assignment from week 2 of Kate Johnson's watercolor texture class. This was a bark closeup. These trees are what I see out our back sliding glass door.

#15 A tree

2007-08-29T23:17:00.000-04:00

I'm taking Kate Johnson's on-line watercolor textures class and last week we did foliage. Here is a tree from the north end of Cape Breton Island Nova Scotia - painted and its photo.

Improbable rock formations

2007-08-08T22:51:00.000-04:00

This has been my favorite exercise from the Keys to Creative Drawing so far. If there's one thing Maine has besides trees, it's rocks. Gosh I love rocks. It never ceases to amaze me how many different shapes and sizes they come in. They're all over the place, as if they were sprinkled from above. I wonder if anyone has waxed poetic over rocks......

More Doodling

2007-08-08T21:59:00.001-04:00

More exercises from Bert Dodson Keys to Creative Drawing. I'm addicted. My Micron pen ran out of ink last night.

I've printed copies of these to color. Stay tuned.

EDM #117 - Something Round (ish)

2007-08-05T21:04:00.000-04:00

One of the exercises in The Creative License (by Danny Gregory) is to draw a bagel. Not just the way you think it is, but really look at it and pretend your pen is following the surface of the bagel. Include onion flecks and seeds and whatever else is there. He said not to just start dotting randomly all over, but to really draw the things they way they are and where they are. I had to laugh because I would have just dotted all over the place if he hadn't said not to.

It's not a perfectly round bagel, but it does have rounded edges so here it is.

In spite of the fact that a micron pen doesn't really do light lines, I'm pretty pleased with it. And I get to have a bagel for breakfast tomorrow to boot.

EDM #26 Draw whatever you want (or a veggie)

2007-08-05T20:42:00.000-04:00

I got several books for my birthday and decided to read 2 of them at once: The Creative License by Danny Gregory and Keys to Drawing with Imagination by Bert Dodson. Both books have exercises in them so I'm alternating between the two.

These are from the Bert Dodson book: Make 6 random doodles then noodle the interiors any way you want.

All these were done with a micron pen. They took forever but I love doodling and so I didn't mind. My hand sure is tired though.

EDM 17 & 36 Part 2 - drawing in public and instruments

2007-06-03T20:10:00.000-04:00

Piano lid prop, sax mouthpiece cover, cymbals. Two versions.

An alto sax and a tenor sax.

Saxophones are hard to draw.

Black Micron .01 pen in itty bitty book.

EDM 36 & 17 Drawing instruments in public

2007-06-03T19:51:00.000-04:00

Back of folding chair.

Side of bass and papier mache cheshire cat. Never finished the cat - the trumpet player kept standing in front of it. I love that cat.

Bass (with hole from falling sculpture).

Bottom of bass.

Side of bass.

Done with a micron .01 black pen in a 2-1/2" x 4" travel sketchbook at a jazz jam session.

It seems as though small paper is more inspiring than large paper. Large being 9" x 12".

EDM 100 A landscape

2007-04-11T21:27:00.000-04:00

Another drawing based on a friend's Northport Island pictures. This one I aim to do in watercolor too. Not real happy with the perspective on the building in front, but that's OK.

Did this one with the 0\.35 Rapidograph, which I've run out of ink already. Still having problems with foreground details. This was icy water again. I pretended it was snow.

#42 Something I'm thankful for

2007-04-08T00:36:00.000-04:00

A friend of mine went to Northport Island and took some photos, which she shared with me. This is a sketch of one of the photos done with Rapidograph with nib 0\.35

The foreground is cracked up ice and snow. I wasn't quite sure how to depict it and so kind of doodled it. I'm not sure if I get tired half way through drawings or what, but I often do this with difficult areas.

Oh yeah - I'm very thankful I live in Maine.

#37 A Key

2007-04-08T00:30:00.000-04:00

This is the first use of a rapidograph, the 0/.35 nib. I have inky fingers (never squeeze the ink bottle) but other than that I enjoyed using the pen very much.

A clock

2007-03-20T22:09:00.000-04:00

Here is a drawing of our tide clock. There is a lot more writing on it but I couldn't see it from where I was sitting. So I was torn - should I go get the clock and draw everything that's on it or only draw what I can see?

I opted to only draw what I could see to force myself to remain in the habit of really looking carefully and only drawing what I see. Usually I attempt to include things I know are there, even if I don't really see them - this is especially so with landscapes.

Also I recalled Susan Hosken's question about symmetry with a light bulb she drew - should she leave it or re-draw it. That discussion helped me leave this drawing a bit skewed. In fact, it sort of seems as though the tide is coming in and pushing on it a bit....

#104 Salt Shaker

2007-03-20T22:01:00.000-04:00

This is the salt shaker I have at work. I don't use pepper so no pepper shaker to draw, although some day I may draw our peppermill home.

#55 Doorknob, Plain

2007-02-13T21:36:00.000-05:00

Very plain. But, it does look like a doorknob!

I'm still in the midst of black and white (and one other color) month, although I don't seem to be using an additional color.

A Power Plug

2007-02-08T19:09:00.000-05:00

What more is there to say?

EDM #60 A vehicle or part of it

2007-02-04T16:18:00.001-05:00

Today, on my way to a jazz jam session (where I had planned to do some sketching, including my first attempt at sketching a person), my truck died. While waiting for my husband to come get me I sat inside it and sketched. This was with my mittens on, holding the pen the way I hold a paintbrush.

If you look close you'll see I even drew the top of the sketchbook - it's at the bottom of the steering wheel.

My husband's comment on this drawing was "It needs more style". When asked to explain he said it would be better if I made everything too long or too short or skewed so the mistakes in detail wouldn't be so noticeable. Interesting comment. I'd been thinking there were too many details and I might have been better off concentrating on darks and lights. But, darks and lights work out better with charcoal and this was done with an extra fine point gel pen. Besides, the interior of my truck is black so it would have been darks and not-quite-so-dark darks.

So, no jazz jamming for me this weekend. Fortunately there's another one in a different place next weekend.

EDM 101 Soap

2007-01-20T10:38:00.000-05:00

If I don't tell you it's a bar of ZEST then you won't know the color is off in the painting (too blue) and even more off in the scan (too purple). So let's just call it Zets soap.

Additionally, a friend of mine challenged me to incorporate 'Just Do It' in all artistic endeavors for the month as a way of helping me overcome advanced procrastination. If you look carefully you'll find it on the box.

Drawn in pencil then watercolored.

EDM 51 TV

2007-01-15T09:14:00.000-05:00

Here is our TV, minus the Christmas ornaments that are still on top of it. Drawn in pencil.

Nothing like MASH reruns late at night.

Challenge #89. A button. Three versions.

2007-01-10T22:31:00.000-05:00

Button #1 is done in ball point pen. I got the shading backwards - it was lighter down the center.

Button #2 is using a Faber Castell Art Pen.

Button #3 is pencil sketched then watercolors - trying out a nifty little travel set.

Landscape drawn from a postcard

2006-12-31T10:19:00.000-05:00

On the last day of drawing class the teacher helped us with whatever we wanted to try. I wanted to work on a landscape and so brought in a postcard of Cape Breton Island to draw from. I had a hard time drawing the clouds until I flipped the postcard and my paper upside down - it made me concentrate on what I was seeing, not what I thought I was seeing - if that makes sense.

It's not finished yet but I am very happy with how the clouds turned out. I think I will draw the rest of it upside down as well. Guess I better learn to stand on my head for when I draw outside.....

Eggs

2006-12-31T10:17:00.000-05:00

That one on the right looks like it's hovering.

A hover egg.

EDM 92 Paper Bags

2006-12-31T10:12:00.000-05:00

From drawing class. And I thought a spoon was a challenge to draw.

EDM 76 Flowers

2006-12-31T10:04:00.000-05:00

Picked some wildflowers (aka weeds) during a downpour last summer.

EDM 94 Spoon

2006-12-31T10:00:00.000-05:00

Drawing a spoon is not as easy as it looks.
It was even difficult to choose a spoon - should I draw a wood spoon, a holey spoon, a large spooon or a tiny one. I settled on the plainest spoon I could find.