Silver Bay

For my Girls Who Draw assignment, "favorite place", I chose Silver Bay, a small YMCA conference center on Lake George in upstate New York. My grandmother started working at this YMCA camp when she was in her 20's (maybe teens?) and returned year after year. Eventually, she and my grandfather bought a small cottage on the mountainside right off campus. Ever since I was zero years old (in my mother's tummy) I have gone to Silver Bay for vacation in the summer. It's rustic (take a canoe out to the middle of the lake if you want to get cell phone service), beautiful, outdoorsy, peaceful... all things that have made it a very special place to me. For three summers in college, I worked at Silver Bay - 2 summers as a Sterling Silver jewelry making instructor, one summer as a conference set-up crew (and the last 2 summers, I was an RA for the dorms, too). I made a lot of long lasting friendships and I look forward to going back there every summer, if I can. So, it is definitely my favorite place in the whole world.

Technique: Another teeny watercolor, this one 4"x6". I need to learn some techniques because this could have been a lot cooler probably. Still learning!

doodles

I have been slacking in the blogging department this week. I am moving TONIGHT into my new apartment, so my free time has been spent packing, cleaning, organizing, making piles for Goodwill, etc. My paintbrushes are packed in one of the gazillion boxes I packed this weekend, so I haven't finished my latest watercolor. But I have been doodling so I thought I would share a little collage of those.

The top left is a landscape drawn after seeing a beautiful shot of some castle in Italy on PBS (I wish I remember which one, but I had just turned the TV on). The man next to it is the host of "The Power of Art" which I caught a few minutes of last night, also on PBS. I sketched a quick outline while he was on screen and then just made the rest up. The man to the far right was a funny little man I shared an elevator with. I went back to my desk and tried to draw him from memory, a challenging thing to do, but oh-so-good for your mind. The bigger drawing is of David's coworker, Monica, playing some MarioCart on a Nintendo 64. Also a quick sketch - she moved her head like an owl while playing which made it difficult to capture her likeness! Then the birds were just randomly sketched from something I saw on TV.

I'm unpacking my first load of stuff tonight - hopefully I'll have a little bit of time to finish my little watercolor!

Iguana

I woke up still feeling ill so I took the day off work. After sleeping most of the day and and consuming some chicken noodle soup, I was feeling well enough to finish my iguana painting. I got a little more bold with the watercolors and ended up with some interesting textures, some good and some bad (what my dad calls "oozles"). I'm definitely learning-by-doing, and it's fun.

By the way, these little watercolor experiments are about 4 1/2" x 7".

old painting

No new drawings today. I started a watercolor but I'm not feeling well and couldn't finish it - hopefully tomorrow. In the meantime, since I don't think I like that sketch of Asian-woman-David, I am going to post an old painting. This was like my "big deal" project in college - I won an award for Realism at an art show for it. It's 3' x 4' and took me for-ev-uh. I remember having an emotional breakdown halfway through it, and my painting teacher, Peter Gooch, totally didn't know how to handle a young, crying female. But, at that moment, he gave me some great advice: He told me my painting was in puberty, like an awkward 12 year old whose body is changing and adapting. It isn't fresh and new like a baby, but it also hasn't fully developed into the adult it will become. I think he mentioned acne and greasy hair. Sounds strange, I know, and it didn't stop the sobbing, but to this day when I feel stuck, I just tell myself it's in puberty and I just keep plugging away.

I like this painting because it's like a moment captured in time. I'm wearing my favorite outfit of senior year (what ever happened to those boots?) I'm in the drawing studio where I spent a LOT of my time. I'm on the couch that we relaxed on during break, and occasionally our models would recline on (eww). The all-too-familiar drapery is tacked up on the wall, and our old metal easels cast shadows in the background. The pages on the ground are little mini Umbrella drawings - they were my big project in my drawing class. Here, why don't I attach one of those too. I was playing with texture and just messing around with pastels and matte medium.

Oh, and I had short red hair, which was fun. Off to try to get some rest...

David

This is like the 113th time I have drawn David in my sketchbook and I still can't draw him accurately. He looks like an Asian woman in this drawing. I used a couple of Derwent design pencils I had laying around. I'll admit, I had had a cocktail or two before the drawing ensued... we have learned that I do not draw well under the influence. It doesn't help that he hates it when I draw him, so he likes to shift around and make faces to make it more difficult.

I sketched him a while back, pre-illustration academy, with a pencil and an eraser, and it looked much better (as in, it actually looks like him). But I'm trying to stick with the George Pratt philosophy of just "get it down" - it won't look right but what matters is that you are looking and drawing. Here's the old drawing:

Sailboat

"Transportation" was this week's theme for Girls Who Draw. This is a sailboat I spotted right off shore in Marigot, St. Maarten when we went on our cruise last month.

This is my 2nd sincere attempt at watercolor. I rather like the technique. Maybe one day I'll get good enough to upgrade to real watercolor paper and paints - right now I'm working in the unintimidating Moleskin watercolor sketchbook with my little travel watercolor set and some crappy paintbrushes that are probably meant for acrylic or oil or something. I painted this while Marie Antoinette played on my DVD player. Weird movie. Probably better if I paid attention to it.

a REALLY old drawing

Please don't think this is me showing off my awesomeness. This is a drawing from February of '99 (I know, because I wrote the date in huge capital letters on the figure's ASS.) I would have been nearing the end of my senior year of high school. I took these special Saturday morning art classes put on by the Louisville Visual Art Association. (Tangent: I wasn't allowed to take art classes until I got my humanity classes out of the way, so by Junior and Senior year I was trying to get as much art education as possible to try to catch up with the other art students at my high school). This is an example of some of my first figure drawing ever. I was a little heavy handed with the charcoal, but you can see that my interest in shapes, like the curve on her back, had already started to develop. I still think women are WAY more fun to draw then men. So many fun curves (well, on normal women anyway!)

More highlighter art.

My day job involves designing brochures for big properties like hotels and office buildings for a real estate investment banking company. While sketching layout thumbnails at work, this girl magically appeared. Then the highlighters joined in the fun.

Not much sketching going on tonight - I'm feeling a little under the weather and I'm running around tying up loose ends of various projects. But I have a lot of fun stuff planned for tomorrow night!

Dwight Final(ly)

For my Vuillardenkornlish assignment.... from April. I finally finished. This one is a lot different from some of my older illustrations, I feel as though my technique might be shifting. I am excited to see what direction it is going.

See original sketch here.

The Raven

My Girls Who Draw assignment for "Literature." This is for Edgar Allen Poe's "The Raven".

chicken noodle soup

Post for my Girls Who Draw assignment, "What's for Dinner."

wine + pen

I didn't learn my lesson. The other night I stayed up late, watched some Grey's Anatomy (I'm just now jumping on that bandwagon), drank some wine.... then grabbed my sketchbook and put the DVD on pause for a minute.

Then I had another glass of wine and did it again.

an old drawing

I did this plein air drawing my junior year in college. I think it was one of my first attempts at drawing with pen. My line work isn't top notch, but I really kind of dig it anyway.