Catching up!

White Horse pen and watercolor

Oops! Been keeping up daily sketching and/or painting with the 48 hour rule - if I miss a day, I catch up the day after. But toward the end of day too tired to post sometimes. So let's catch up everything we missed working backwards... above is today's White Horse done in my large Moleskine watercolor journal from my daughter's photo. She says the nearest, right side knee has a congenital deformity in my painting, so I'm still going to be working on perfecting horse anatomy. Maybe return to this reference more than once in different media till I get it right!

Broken Tree Demo

Yesterday's art for the 29th, a sketch from imagination as a demo for my email student on tree anatomy. Also to refine the memory of a couple of lightning-struck trees I saw at different times in my life. Memory sketching is fun!

Blue Rose - watercolor

Painting for the 28th, actually sketched in pencil on the 28th and painted on the 29th. Just a rose from my own photo painted blue because I felt like it. Still using up the three dabs of American Journey watercolor triad occupying my porcelain palette. It's a triad, it's got some possibilities.

Owl from Memory, tombow pens

Sketched on the 27th, think that was an extra for the day. I was making up for skipping a day but did a couple of others.

Cat "Teo" pen and watercolor

My favorite of the three pieces I did on the 27th, a cat portrait in Pentel Brush Pen and watercolor with a mixed-shaded loose watercolor background. Did use the American Journey watercolor triad for this one too, relying more on Quinacridone Alizarin Crimson and Ultramarine with Joe's Yellow only used in his green-gold eyes. Accurate cat portrait.

Candy Colored Playtime (Abstract)

Same large Moleskine watercolor journal as the previous, now using only the red and yellow in the triad plus some red and yellow Derwent ArtBars washed out. Experimental textures and shapes, goofing around doing an abstract. Was done to make up for the 25th when I didn't draw. Except started it then with the crimson spattering, then waited for paint to dry and went to bed. Ths is some of why the 48 hour rule is handy. If I don't finish whatever it is and chronic fatigue knocks me down first, I still finish within a day after. With that rule I haven't missed a day completely.

Now I'm all caught up! Will be posting tomorrow of course.

November posting may be intermittent though, as November is NaNoWriMo, as always I will be participating. This year I'm editing Elder's Pride, my sabertooths book, and writing a vampire novel. Rough drafts are easy after doing Nano every year since 2000 - the idea is to write a 50,000 word book in 30 days and I only failed once on account of pneumonia slowing me to a November 25 start in 2002. One year I did 500,000 words in five and a half novels and just totally overdid it. Most times I finish the book too. 

Editing is not that easy - but if it becomes so, I can start whipping out good readable books at a great prolific pace even if I don't bother going back to a lot of the ones I wrote in the past. Some have flaws I don't want to bother fixing. Some of them I don't like the theme any more. So the real challenge for me is the rewrite, which is mostly redoing each scene from scratch in its proper point of view and paying attention to suggestions from critiquers. In effect, writing with an outline and line edit, spell check when I'm done. That last pass is mechanical and not the problem, it's the changes that give me problems. 

So I've got a reward system. Edit my scene in Elder's Pride, then if I have energy write some in the vampire novel, if it's a good day also sketch. Vamp novel is very easy because backstory is all worked out in Raven Dance for how my vamps work, know them forwards and backwards except these characters, story idea has lots of inherent conflict and so does their point in "vampire history." It goes way back to the hominids and way forward into Raven Dance. 

Which in terms of writing novels means it's like sketching something very familiar, the backstory's all done and I don't have to work it out. Just do these ones. Like sketching cats, really. Not a romance novel if you're interested, more of a horror one, very contemporary. Not all vamps evil though, just as not all people evil, not really horror of good and evil so much as conflict and tragedy. I might be smashing genre a bit or maybe not, will have to see when it's done.

Kitten just sent me horse knee anatomy diagrams, so that error can be remedied. Going to do some anatomy drawings and have a go again in another similar medium, probably watercolor pencils or Neocolor II in the big journal.

None of these have to be perfect. It's final paintings that become wall art where I like to get it that accurate. See you tomorrow!