Convalidation and Sketching

I've gotten out of the habit of carrying my sketchbook around everywhere and using it, so when I had to go to a Convalidation class yesterday with the husband, well -- it was a very long class!

As a side note, if they took all the religious stuff out of it, it would be a very good class for incipient bridal couples (talking about the importance of communication and understanding; realizing how much one's family influences a person and how they act in a marriage; how to fight fairly and repair any hurts that occur over the course of a relationship -- no, not physical fights or hurts! Anyway, everyone knows I don't fight fairly!) because not only does it teach valuable life skills on living the married life, it also is a test of devotion. If you're willing to attend something like this with your spouse-to-be for eight hours, then you'll have a better understanding of what marriage is all about as well as proof of your devotion to your beloved. Since this particular class was for married people (my husband returned to the Catholic Church), he so totally owes me ice cream for doing this.

Anyway, here's a few sketches from that class. And yes, I was paying attention while I was doing this.

SuperDanny!

So.  They've got a new Superman in the works, and a new actor to play the Man of Steel.  Didn't the last Superman movie come out just a few years ago?

Anyway, got to talking with the husband about Superman actors, and he suggested a couple that I thought could be interesting. 

Danny Devito.  I think that would be awesome.  I like Danny Devito.  And they should cast Rhea Perlman as Lois Lane.

Oh gawd.  That would so kick butt.

I even did up a little quick sketch in Autodesk Sketchbook Express with Devito wearing the cape.  Please excuse the uber-crappy quality; I did it in ten minutes.  Very sketchy quality, no thought to composition or color theory, just a quick, quick scrawl to get the idea down.

Then the husband suggested another actor:  John Cleese.

I'd pay twice the going movie ticket prices to see that.

Sorry, Mr. Devito.  We still love you though.

All I Want for Xmas --

My husband is a mean ol' man. I adore him. And I'd rather draw him a thousand thousand times than keep his photo in my wallet. He's a patient model, and very game for anything.

And did I mention he's a mean ol' man?

He came home from work on the 23rd with a bag from Best Buy which he put under the tree, after informing me that it was for me. I was a little surprised, simply because earlier in the month he'd asked me what I wanted for Xmas, and I told him. As far as I know, downloadable audiobooks don't come in Best Buy bags. I looked askance at the package.

"What is it?" I asked.

He smiled at me brightly. "It's a present!" he replied in a chipper tone designed solely to annoy.

No matter how much wheedling, whining, whinging, asking, prodding, needling, pouting or otherwise making a pest of myself, he remained stalwart and refused to answer my question.

Though he did offer to let me peek. But really, where's the fun in that?

So, I waited (im)patiently, until the husband came home from Midnight Mass, at which time I was permitted to (finally!) open up my gift, which was way cooler than what I got him.

The marvelous bastard got me a Wacom Intuos 4.

Dear Barnes and Noble:

I understand that when I place an order and check on the free shipping thingy that you'll hang on to my order until it's complete.  It's a fact of mail order that I know well.  I can be patient and accept this.  But why must you hold my entire order until the day my pre-order comes in, and then proceed to ship the pre-order separately from the rest of the in-stock items?  You're very silly. 

So far, I have received Donato's very pretty picture book, Stephanie Law's gorgeous instructional book and Jim Butcher's latest oeuvre.  They all arrived yesterday in great condition.  But really, my time could have been better spent in poring over them lovingly these past three weeks while I eagerly await Jim Gurney's Color and Light.

I think it very shameless that you should tease and taunt a poor bibliovore like me.

Yours sincerely,

Pat

Improvement

Just to show how far I've come since May of '09:

(stock courtesy mizzd-stock)

When I did this piece, it was the best thing I'd done to date digitally.  This was done in OpenCanvas 1.1 with a graphics tablet.  I didn't know how to floodfill the canvas in OC, so in order to introduce tone to the canvas I had to ruddy well paint it in.  I did this in a single layer, in one hour.  Even then I was aware that the likeness simply wasn't there, but I was quite happy with it.  It looked sorta-kinda-almost realistic.  Yay me.

Recently I discovered OC's ability to create event files of the paintings one creates in it, so I went back through and watched myself paint.  When I came to this piece though, I was horrified by how bad the initial drawing was.  Was I --?  Did I --?  Eek.

I'd forgotten how that drawing looked since it had gotten painted over in the process.  Compare to the drawing of my recent self-portrait:

Granted, painting the self-portrait took several hours, and as a result, it's a great deal more polished -- but my drawing technique's improved quite a bit. Even now, with my hour-long (not quite) daily sessions of painting, my drawings have more information; are less . . . slapdash.

Thank you, Evil Professor Rex.

(note to self:  must draw a portrait of Evil Professor Rex as the supervillain he is.)

Summer School

I'm currently in Life Drawing II this summer. On a lot of levels, I'm rather surprised at how unstressful it's been. I've been in classes all summer, from Maymester to Summer II, and everything's been so stressful. Interestingly, I'm taking two classes during Summer II, and my life-drawing class, four hours a day, four days a week, is so. Incredibly. Unstressful. Dare I say, nigh relaxing.

Evil Professor Rex is making the drawing II students go the extra mile, experiment with materials, and so on, so this week and next week, I'm working in silverpoint. It's something I've been wanting to do for quite awhile, so I'm incredibly happy to have the opportunity to work in this medium. On prepared paper. Utilizing rabbitskin glue. Which stinks. But hey, pretty, pretty surface to draw on. I kinda don't want to draw on anything else now.

I'll post what I've done when I have a bit more *snort* time.

Reappearing on the Face of the Planet

School sucked out my soul, chewed it up, and spit out the gristle. So now I have gristle for a soul.

Year in recap: school, school, school, more school, life drawing, school, school, and a bit more school, life painting, school, school, schule, more life drawing and school.

And let's not forget the school.

Also, in a great abuse of irony, I promise to post more art here in my copious free time.

I see that my last post talked about the 9X12 show -- I missed last year's show, but I have plenty of time to consider this year's show. Of course, I have nothing that will fit neatly into a 9X12 envelope, but that's what copious free time is for. Or so I'm told.

I wonder if the ancient Greeks had myths about free time, copious or un.

Drapery, sans Figure

I miss school already -- having just moved into our new house, and considering its distance to the campus -- well, there's no way. Short of teleportation.

Anyway, one of the things I've done this summer was to spend about a week studying drapery. I'd much prefer if the drapery were, well, draped around a figure, but one must adapt. Usually, in the figure-drawing class, we only get about twenty minutes per pose (thirty if we're extra-special good!), so I usually end up blocking in the figure and spending the majority of the time trying to capture the folds of the fabric. Twenty minutes just ain't enough to do it, sadly -- this little study took nearly two hours, and is a great deal smaller than what I normally work when I draw the figure.




Derwent Drawing Pencil (Chocolate) on manila paper, 7.75" x 10.5"


Although I must say, it was kinda nice to work with something that didn't need a break.

Update

Well, no new art to post as of yet -- most of the summer was spent *waiting* for our house to be ready to move into, and did I mention the waiting and waiting and waiting? And of course, the waiting was done while most of my art supplies were packed.

But hey! It's all over and done with, and we're all moved. Most of my supplies are unpacked now; I just have to organize things. However it's a little difficult as we have to worry about giant hordes of tiny attack frogs.

Yes. Tiny frogs. A few nights ago, as the husband went outside to smoke, a couple of the itty-bitty little frogs charged him and managed to make their way inside. We were able to capture one of them rather quickly, but the second one eluded us for quite some while. When he reappeared we evicted him as well, but he had been out of sight for long enough to emplace hidden cameras, or *shudder* do things to our computer (just what he did to our computer I dare not imagine!).

Seriously -- they're tiny. About an inch long. And bright green.

And they're so freaking cute!

The first time we saw one, it hopped onto the husband as he walked out the back door, startling him. Here's the culprit, hanging around on our back door:



And here's one I saw this morning, on our kitchen window, backlit by the sun:





And of course, the little blighter pooped on the window while he was there:



And yesterday I saw a frickin' huge moth on our patio door:



He hung out there for quite awhile, even letting me put my hand close enough to him so I could show his scale:



And, since this is really supposed to be an art blog, here's one of my daily sketches I did back in June:



graphite, watercolor, Derwent InkTense pencils, and acrylic.

EDIT: You know those little green frogs? One just attacked my nose. I'd be traumatized if I weren't laughing so damn hard.

Everyday, a Little Something

I try to sketch something everyday, even if I can't get in a good drawing or painting. I started this habit during winter break, and got some pretty nice sketches out of the experience, but it fell by the wayside as soon as school started up again.

Now it's summer time, and I've started up again, in a new book. Some of the sketches are crap, some are "meh", and some are pretty good if I say so myself. I try to get the ones that are decent-looking posted online, either here at this blog, or in the scraps section of my deviantArt site.

Of course, the lack of sketches in today's post meant that everything I've sketched since my last posting is rubbish.

April Showers Bring . . . Lots of Shows, Apparently!

So -- the show I was frantically preparing for has come and gone, but meanwhile it seems like everyone and their dog has a show this month! In the span of about a week I've attended three receptions! Even the show I was in had its reception earlier this month. What is this, June for weddings and April for art shows?

Anyway -- I ended up primarily hanging drawings at our Emerging Artists show. It was a serendipity that allowed a friend of mine to end up posing -- fully clothed! -- in our figure drawing class, and she was an awesome model. I don't think there was anyone that day who didn't come away with good drawings of her. Paintings take me far, far too long, and I'd rather take the time to consider how I REALLY want things to look and work on my skills besides. I will say this, though -- it was hard for my drawings to compete with the paintings that the other artists hung. Bigger doesn't always mean better, but it sure as hell helps.

Naked

I'm currently working on a number of works for an upcoming show in March. The show is for those students who did well in the Fall Portfolio Review at my college, and it's off-campus at a local community arts center. I am so totally cool with that. I love to show off my art.

However.

And it is something of a however.

Not a but. Because, as it turns out, but(t)s are a bit problematic.

The people who run the venue are a bit on the conservative side. Prof B. -- who was the one who informed me that I was included in the show (yay!) -- also informed me that they specified no nudes.

Ulp.

I am, primarily, a figural artist. I love the figure. If I could take figure drawing classes every day for the rest of my life, I'd probably be quite happy. It's hard enough that people are reluctant to purchase nudes even though they understand it's artistic, and even admire the image. But to have a venue that won't show nudes, and not because of local ordinances -- that's demoralizing to me.

And they're not the only ones shying away from the nude. I've heard that one of the local colleges won't accept nude figural work for an inter-college show. What the heck is up with that? One of the things that is usually required for a college submission portfolio is figural work. The nude figure has a long and exalted history in art education. And for a college to refrain from hanging figural work . . .

I'm glad -- and lucky! -- that the school I go to is willing to hang nude figural work.

Anyway, if you're still with me, and you remember what I wrote at the very top, I mentioned I'm working on a number of pieces for the upcoming exhibition. I have a body of work, but that body is naked.

Oh, excuse me. Nude. *wink*

Here's something from my sketchbook that I'm going to expand on for the show:

Look Ma -- no breasts. I'm sure she'd be so proud.

On second thought, she'd probably try to have me committed. She's more into staid portraits and still lifes.

First Post

What the hell am I supposed to say? "Hello world"? Um-hm. And I'm sure my shouts and cries would be drowned out in the hullaballoo of the blogosphere.

I thought about it for awhile, what I should post in my initial foray into blogdom. For the longest time I resisted blogging simply because I'm a very private person. But, believe it or not, in my own way, I do crave something of an audience. I'm an artist, and I like showing people my work. I think showing one's work is a very important part of the artistic process. (Or maybe I'm just a show-off.)

So then, a post about this being my first post: Well, I suppose I could just pop one of my pieces up here and say (metaphorically, of course), "Ta-DA! Here's my work!" But that kinda rubs me the wrong way. Blogs, to me, are about writing, even art blogs. And when I write, I like to have a beginning, a middle, and an end. So here is the start of my blog, and I should have a cohesive beginning. Well, I hope it's cohesive. And I really didn't want to start in medias res as if I'd been here all along. I haven't. But I'm here now.

About me, in a nutshell(which makes me the nut): I'm an artist, I live in north Texas. I draw. I paint. I occasionally sculpt very poorly.




A green man sculpture I did about a year or so ago, unglazed stoneware, painted with acrylics.

So, pull up a chair. Pop in occasionally. Look at my art. Comment on it if you feel moved to. And on my end of things, I'll post images of my work as well as works-in-progress. I'll even write about my experience with art. Actually, getting me to shut up would be a bit of effort.

As you can see, I'm still moving in, still learning the ropes. Excuse the mess. At least you can still see the floor.