Thing a Day 2012

Am participating once again in Thing A Day - and am still optimistic I can do something creative every day. This year I'll be working through the Drawing Lab for Mixed Media Artists by Carla Sonheim.

This year Thing A Day is on Word Press. Go here to see day 1: /

The Sketchbook Project.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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....."

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

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!

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

#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

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

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)

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

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

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

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.