Light Purple Iris from Life

 Light Purple Iris from Life, pen-watercolor

in pocket Moleskine Watercolor journal

Hen, Goat, Cat, Rocks Page

pen-watercolor in pocket Moleskine Watercolor book

Missed posting the Hen, Goat, Cat and Rocks page when I finished it. Switched over to my other pocket journal, the sleek 3" x 5" Moleskine Watercolor one. Still has 140lb cold press paper but the grain is a lot finer than the Strathmore, allows more detail and smaller sketches with fine point pens. 

Everything's from life of course. There's huge patches of irises coming up in the yard across the driveway, under and between the trees and on a hill that used to have a fountain. The first to bloom was that rich red-violet. The second is a light purple, bluer, a good tint of Dioxazine Violet with touches of blue here and there.

Now a third has bloomed with dark lower petals and light upper petals. I'll have to paint that one too, naturally! Kitten says there are bronze ones, white, pink, other colors, so I can't wait to see what blooms next. 

The jonquils are all bloomed out but there were so many of them I was thrilled. Bulb flowers seem to do well here! I hope my hyacinth survives to bloom again next year and maybe propagate itself.

Golden Barn Cat and First Iris

Golden Sutekh barn cat and first iris

3" x 5" pen and watercolor on 140lb cold press paper

Only two pages left to fill! I had to capture golden Sutekh, the long haired ginger tabby barn cat. He is magnificent! I love that cat, he's my outdoor friend just like Calcifer. Very friendly and easy going.

The first iris of the year finally opened yesterday. I knew it would be purple but the hue is spectacular! Not the blue-violet I expected but a rich deep saturated red-violet that I managed to capture by shading in Dioxazine Violet, then glazing over that with Permanent Rose. It didn't entirely come through in the photo but in person the color's a true match. I kept the green of the leaves a little muted and leaning toward Quinacridone Gold to keep the saturation emphasis on the flower.

This is a good page. I don't know what I'll do on the next two, but happily I found my pocket watercolor Moleskine after weeks of searching. It was in the art supplies bag that I had in the hospital when I had pneumonia, but slid to the bottom where a magnifying glasses holder clipped onto its elastic so when we searched before all we saw was the glasses holder. Took getting everything out of the bag to actually find it - so now I have something in hand to keep going with small pen-watercolor life sketches!

White Lily from Life, 3" x 5"

Watercolor pencil on cold press watercolor paper.

Now there's only one page left in the journal. Very tempting to finish with a sketch of Ari or Kyra or both of them together. Get back to my sweet loving fur buddy as I keep getting distracted by flowers and other animals!

Cat Calcifer and Kid Couch Cushion in Pen

2 pen drawings, cat Calcifer and baby goat Couch Cushion

3" x 5" pen on paper.

I had intended these to be pen and wash, but once I finished Calcifer I knew I wanted to keep them pen drawings. He is an elegant brown tabby who curls up on my lap every time I go out to sit in the lawn chair in front of the house. He's very classic, a mackerel tabby with narrow stripes all up and down his body instead of the swirl on the side. Big green eyes and constant purring.

This started on cold nights or rainy days when I went out to smoke but now it's all the time. He knows he can get a good long cuddle, scritch and comfy lap every time I go out. I know every time I go outside I'll have a friendly barn cat come up, three out of four times it's Calcifer.

So he's the lawn chair cushion when I first go out, then I pick him up and sit down, put him down on my lap. He just relaxes at the lap transfer. Great cat friend, I can even draw over him without disturbing him.

Couch Cushion is a dark brown and black kid, the runt of the six baby goats born two weeks ago. He's gorgeous, the color of his brown fur is very rich and the black is shiny. Like all the kids, he's a meat goat so he gets a name that's a reminder not to get too attached. Other kids are named things like Parchment, Vellum, Lunchmeat and so on. I'm hoping at least one can be literally made into goat parchment instead of just leather or fur because that stuff is expensive and a pure joy to draw and paint on.

I've used parchment before with gouache and inks for SCA scrolls, but with a steady supply I might also turn to doing serious art on it. That and there's no reason I can't work small on parchment either. It comes out so smooth that it's a pleasure for miniatures, you can use the finest pen point you have and get good clean lines. Unlike paper though, a mistake can sometimes be carefully removed by scraping with a sharp craft knife or razor blade without destroying the surface. All this is reason to treat it like the precious art material it is.

But the fur on Couch Cushion is so cool that his hide will wind up made up into just that, for permanent comfort. They get slaughtered humanely and never see it coming, my daughter's done this before. We know where our food comes from and I can't believe how good it is.

The eggs from the hens you've seen me draw before are deep brown and inside the yolks are Cadmium Orange to Cadmium Red Light in color. When my son in law makes pancakes they're yellow. But the flavor is amazing. It's like eggs but more so, very rich and so wonderful. I'm spoiled from normal eggs and it's the same way with farm raised meat humanely slaughtered.

We even get beef this way because my daughter shoes horses and sometimes gets paid in steaks and meat from local farmers. Wow. It was like I'd never tasted meat before. An odd thing happens when the animal is terrorized on the way to slaughter, literally all its adrenaline and cortisol affects the flavor. If it had a full happy life ending in a quick surprise too fast to really hurt, the meat is a lot better and richer. This is why sometimes hunted meat comes out really good (provided your hunter got it clean on the first shot).

Life's good here in so many ways.

Aerial Perspective and Lilies

 Rain Recession, watercolor 3" x 5" trees and clouds

Lilies and Stone Wall, pen and watercolor, 3" x 5"

I'm happily filling up the little Strathmore Visual Journal with its coarse 140lb cold press watercolor paper. It's small, it's handy and it's a good journal for wash techniques thanks to the heavy paper.

Rain Recession is what I painted on 3-29-2016, a view from the window over several layers of trees on a rainy-misty day. I loved the view and will probably do it many times, as Spring progresses it gets greener and greener. Living here on my daughter's farm in Arkansas, I'm surrounded by paintable scenes and almost any change in weather gives them new charm. I didn't add pen details because when I finished loosely painting, it didn't need them.

What I did though was condense trees from several angles into the painting. It's not a photo of the window view so much as an impression. I've gotten away from exact realism and even make small rearrangements on botanicals without losing the identity of the plant. It just has to be plausible. Removing a leaf or two in imagination or adding another flower that's on another plant but at an angle that'd improve the composition doesn't change that the plant can be identified by someone that knows it. It's not a portrait of that exact plant.

My son in law got that Easter lily in a pot with purple foil around it as a gift after volunteering at his church. This happens often to people who belong to big churches that really lay on the floral displays, many poinsettias go home with folks too after a big Christmas mass.

So he put it in the little garden patch in front of the house, where it tipped over and leaned against the short mossy stone wall defining it. There's stone-edged plots on both sides of the door and a pathway of big flagstones between them, which is very cool. I loved the way it looked and the day he brought it home, it hadn't bloomed yet. Now it's opening up.

So yesterday I sketched it in pencil, inked with a Pigma Micron size 01 and brought it inside to give it a watercolor finish. I do intend to paint it again later in more detail, the reflected colors on and inside the white blossom are beautiful and the inside trumpet has a smear of yellow that I thought was reflected but is actually pollen that fell off those stamens. I got a good long look at the structure and today got some more photos of it along with outdoor cat Calcifer.

He's one of three official Barn Cats who keep the rodents down around the grain kept for horses, goats and chickens. All three are sleek, well fed, perfectly groomed with silky coats and very affectionate personalities. I got a wonderful photo of him with the lilies today, one I may develop later as a serious painting.

The flowers seem to glow a bit due to the camera, but the cat's great and I can work on shading the flowers later after studying other photos where the flower's the main subject. The day is overcast, which helps!

Calcifer and the Easter Lilies

He's a sweet, super friendly lap cat. When I go outside to sit in the lawn chair and smoke, Calcifer is my number one lap warmer. Dampness, chilly weather, rain, anything inclement will guarantee a warm lap cat purring loud and cuddling. Calcifer likes it even when it's nice and sunny. Sometimes I stay out longer petting cats and talking with my daughter, the spot right outside the door has become our lounge area.

I like that habit. I'm smoking a little less because it takes a few steps and some effort to get out there, seeing a lot more of the yard and getting lots of sun on good days. It's also helped me get out of my chair a little more unless I'm really, really in bad shape. I didn't realize how much I stayed indoors till I moved here to have a good place in reach to go outside and good models always in sight. The chickens hang out there too on and off, which cuts way down on bugs. I may not need the Vitamin D supplements any more, unless it's winter and I get the winter problems that led me to take them in the first place. It's a good feeling.

Today I might be fooling around with colored inks and dip pens since my Blick order came in on the 30th. Twelve year old granddaughter got her birthday present early, a big set of Snazaroo face paints and the small set of six crayon face paints for drawing on her arms. I couldn't resist her excitement! The rest was all colored Bombay India Inks, silverpoint supplies and new dip pens, so I'll be experimenting with both period medieval stuff and modern pen-watercolor things with all those colored inks.

Crowquill dip pens give a very fine line like a Pigma Micron or Rapidograph but are as easy to clean as a brush and don't clog. Also even if I wreck a point, the nibs are so much cheaper! They also change colors as fast as a brush so I could really have some fun with the Claudia Nice style of pen-watercolor stuff!

Kyra kitten and pen sketches

 Kyra Kitten from life, sepia pen and watercolor, 3 x 5"

 Pen sketches of Capricorn the lamb from life, 3" x 5"

Pen sketch of Kyra Kitten from life in the window, 3" x 5"

Today was a good day for sketching. I penciled those lamb sketches yesterday and inked them today, decided they did need inking. Kyra Kitten in black was my first sketch of her while she sat in the window looking lanky. Then she went to sleep on the box of my art supplies looking adorable so I had a good long time to sketch her in detail, pen and wash the sketch.

I'm getting to know my new kitten and how her features differ from Ari's. She's much more slender, very long and delicate. Her facial structure is different with a tiny, almost pointed muzzle, big ears, lovely big eyes that sometimes look dark but are a very bright blue. Her markings are a little more distinct every week, she has Siamese points broken up by the white blotch pattern that gives her white feet and the white muzzle and flame-face shape. She's adorable and unique, not your standard cat at all!

And I have still more cats to draw and profile, the small black female longhair Toothless formerly Midnight, big plump gray and white China Princess who rules the house. Outside we have three barn cats: gigantic golden Maine Coon Tom Sutekh, lovely small tortie super long hair Sekhmet and the classical brown mackerel tabby Calcifer. All of the barn cats are very affectionate and when I go out for a smoke, I get a lap cat most of the time purring and wanting pets. I love having so many cats here, they're all beautiful.

Plus there's the big flock of assorted chickens, the Muscovy Ducks that look like Tim Burton would put them in Halloween Town, the pregnant goats, two dogs and several horses. I've got so many beautiful subjects that I'd better start doing more than one a day, at least when the weather's good!

Kyra Kitten from Life in Pen and Watercolor

Kyra Kitten from Life, pen and watercolor

3" x 5" short hair Siamese cat with white blotches.

Kyra was sound asleep on a chair, so I managed to capture the endlessly moving Bumble Kitten inert just long enough to pencil her - and get her unusual proportions accurately. She is a very long, thin kitten. Muscular rather than bony, she sometimes resembles a leggy, furry snake! Long long neck. Long face. Long legs actually too, she just has that Siamese lanky build. Beautiful blue eyes, white muzzle and white patterns on her body and legs.

When I first met her, she seemed white all over but as she ages, the faint blotches of beige Siamese-colored fur are popping up more intensely. She now shows the unique markings that make her my Siamese Crossed With A Snowpatch!

Instead of pan watercolors, I used 24 Cretacolor Aqua Monolith pencils and washed out the penciling, keeping my colors soft and natural. The blue-green cushion's a bit lighter than life but I did that to keep the painting soft.

Love my Bumble Kitten! She's been good for Ari - she loves him and constantly teases him to play!

Cats from Life in Pen

Kitten Kyra and Cat Ari sleeping condensed

While looking for Bombay India Ink Pen Cleaner, I went through all my tubs and found where the cats hid the three big Catnip Carrots. Flung those out into the room and the kitten went crazy. All three played wildly but that kitten was ridiculous, doing somersaults and handstands while strangling, kicking, chewing and washing it.

She wobbled and chased the cats around. Even grumpy matriarch China got silly and chased the kitten. Much feline gaiety later, they all crashed out so solidly they held still for more than two minutes! So I had to sketch them. I didn't pencil first either, both are just pen sketches.

The other page I did wasn't pretty, just swirls and bits of calligraphy practice and lines of block lettering in various colors in crowquill. A disorganized color chart for my Bombay India Inks. I should have just replaced the wheel of inks, got most of them anyway. But they're a little easier to store not in the wheel. Had fun with them sorting out and putting away all my new scribal goodies. 

One of my next projects will involve cleaning out my wooden scribe box to have a good place to keep these inks and dip pens and things!

Cats in Pen from Life

Ari and Kyra, cat and kitten drawn from life

Today's daily art is little life drawings of both my cats, old fluffy Ari boy and young Kyra the Bumble Kitten. She's now wearing a collar that Sasha made for her, hasn't objected to it at all. Looks cute on her and does break the smooth line of her neck fur slightly.

Her contours and markings are tricky because she's in constant motion and usually folding or bending or jumping. Her gestures are graceful but I'm mostly drawing them from memory even while watching her!

The other thing I did today was begin designing my next scroll project and choosing a text. Haven't decided yet but did figure out one of the figures will be a cat washing herself and got a good gesture sketch on the practice paper. That sketch is too light to photo well but when I get to drawing it on good paper I may get a photo - or might wait till the entire scroll is done for photos. Depends on what I feel like doing at the time and whether I did other art on any given day.

For today I was still productive and thus happy.

Tomorrow supplies arrive!

Cats and Horses - Changed Plans

 Kitten Kyra ATC colored pencils on paper

Horses page, large Moleskine watercolor journal, coffee and watercolor

Well, plans change! Sorry I haven't been posting. I have barely been online since I moved on December 18th, 2015. Running aronnd offline traveling across the continent and then getting all my stuff sorted out meant very little online time.

My original plan was to stay in my daughter's house for a few days, at least till after Christmas, then rent a house at the amazing low rate of $200 a month and live comfortably on my disability payments, reduced by local cost of living adjustment. That budget does work in my favor, because the California increase was not adequate to the real costs of living in San Francisco. My budget here would have been better even in the house with all the bills. I used the last California-sized check to buy furniture for the house.

Then the owner decided not to move to New Mexico after all. Meanwhile I'd been out to the house and daunted by the fact that the driveway had a gate in it down a long rutted country lane that I could not walk that far on a good day to let in a guest, plus they'd have to phone me to get me out there to do so. Forget picking up mail, there wasn't even a mail box. Just some more lane going past a single neighbor's house that opened onto a real road right next to the post office. The people who live there do a lot of hiking.

I do not. I would need to use my power chair to go that far if it was paved, which it wasn't. I'd also need it to get from one end of the way too large house to the other and be heating or cooling enough house for half a dozen people on one disability check when I'm too sick to handle either extreme cold or heat. It would be a wonderful deal for a spry, healthy person who likes hiking and has a strong constitution for weather, plus a car. For a can't drive mobility impaired guy it would have created total dependence on my daughter every single day for everything and if anything went wrong, having to go out in Weather to get a cell phone signal. It was a nice house, but I could not live there anyway. There was no way to tell till I got here. 

So I moved into my daughter's house. I've been doing horse drawings and occasional chickens since I arrived. Yesterday we finished the massive task of unpacking everything in the stuff from the horse trailer and getting it sorted into the shed, the house or the attic. Some things I'm just sharing with the family. My five glass vases are up safely out of cat range with her glass pitchers and vases, seen and not wrecked in the kitchen. Kitchen stuff is stored or shared. Clothes in a tub tucked out of the way.

Art supplies amazingly mostly came inside after everything was said and done. I've got a few things out in the shed but all oils and acrylics are in here, all stored art is in the attic with framed pictures, almost all pastels, colored pencils and oil pastels are in here with me. I'm pretty sure all watercolors are too. There's stuff stored in the attic that I was planning on unpacking over at the rental house, but that's all staying in the attic. Anything that cold or heat would permanently damage is inside. 

I'm not sure if the spray fixative cans survived being out in the cold. One can of fixative that got left by a friend in a car after an art meeting during a Kansas winter became unusably cloudy after the freezing and thawing, but if they are, I can replace them. I should check them before I place my next Blick order. Pretty sure the Spectrafix doesn't work that way, but will find out. Everything else came through pretty well. There were a lot of things far more expensive than fixative cans that I was worried about cold, heat and moisture damaging that came through all right. Some papers and books seemed slightly damp but nothing got too warped and it'll flatten as it dries.

From several days before the move till now I've been overdoing it, on my feet too long doing too much every day. I can finally rest. Will get back to blogging regularly from here on out, back to daily as soon as I can. Now that I'm all in one place I can start working on having a set of habits again!

The posted art - little Kyra is Ari's new friend, a several months old kitten found and rescued at the rental house. Best thing about the rental house thing was finding Bumble Kitten. Ari cat loves her and he plays with her often. Colored pencils on paper. The horses are from life from riding along on my daughter's horse riding trips. I finally got coffee dark enough to give me a good mid value by using boiled down coffee that got left on the coffee maker too long! It's probably even darker now that it's evaporated for some days. Loved coffee paintings but had never successfully gotten dark ones done before!

Cats from Life with Serval Zouletta

Cats from Life Page

Pentel Brush Pen and Watercolor on Moleskine 

There they are, two Ari cat life studies in pen and watercolor, five Zouletta Serval studies in pen and watercolor. I used Sepia, Quinacridone Burnt Orange (to warm the mix in Ari's fur), and Payne's Grey for serval paws and Ari cat's background. 

Zouletta was much more lively tonight at Big Cat Hospital. The folks at Big Cat Rescue put a camera in the cage whenever one of the big cats is in for treatment, so volunteers can watch to see if they're recovering okay. There's a number to call in a cat emergency, this is entertainment but also volunteering  to check on sick, often endangered big cats. 

I first got into it with Skippy the Bobcat, who had a lot of Internet fame. I posted a painting of him on Facebook an raffled it to support BCR, wound up carrying 15 months of taking care of a bobcat with that painting so feel very good about it.

Now the cat in the infirmary is Zouletta, who ate an acorn. They had to give her surgery to get it out of her small intestine. She's doing better tonight, less lethargic, less miserable looking. She gets up and moves, turns around, washes herself and the Cone of Shame is gone. I don't know if she's had a bowel movement yet but she's definitely recovering well and if she hasn't, I think she will soon. She's on the mend.

Beautiful Zouletta turned showing her face several times so I managed to get her profile, she moved too much for a full face view. Still, that's not bad for big cat studies from a live, restless big cat! I'll bet when I get to visit the Arkansas big cat rescue place, I'll find at least some of them awake and repeating poses. Good practice for when I make that trip!

Sleep well, Zouletta!

I'm also maknig progress on my novel, neck and neck with the deadline. Need to finsh by midnight tomorrow night and have only 3,606 to go. So I've got a good chance of getting it done. Wrote 4k today along with serval sketching. So that rocks. Hope I can get this last sprint in!

Cats from Life

Cats from life in brush pen 5 1/2" x 4"

Two studies of Ari in my large Moleskine along with a serval named Zouletta Serval. She was on the Big Cat Hospital live feed and that's a life drawing opportunity too. It's the same thing, the cat moves, I can't scroll back but just have to watch for repeat poses.

I plan to finish the rest of the page with cats from life, probably studies of Ari but maybe another sketch of Zouletta. She is a lovely cat. She had a transparent Cone of Shame on but I didn't document that for posterity, just failed to sketch it. I could see her head and ears well through it.

Life Sketches in Brush Pen

Sketches from life in Tombow brush pen

I used up one of my Tombow brush pens sketching the boot. Liked how it came out as the fading dried out ink gave me some soft middle values. The cat sketch I did on the 18th looks a little grumpy and isn't one of my best, but the later one on the 25th wasn't bad. Other stuff includes a plastic pear mostly from above, my lighter, Swiss army knife and salt shaker.

This sketchbook is nearly full! That's a good feeling, need to keep going with it.

Not much for a week but I spent most of it writing on my really lousy Nanowrimo novel. Up to 36,828 words on it and will be caught up for real in a day or so when I get back to it. Not much drawing till end of month unless I do one pastel painting - or get the novel done and still have energy to sketch!

Kitten Kyra

First sketches of Kitten Kyra

Tombow dual tip pens on sketchbook

Today's art and yesterday's art, all caught up. Last night sketched the kitten full body sitting on a kitchen chair, today using the same reference I slowed down to sketch just her pretty face. I got her face a little too long on the first one but the second has her proportions and expression better. Very young cat.

I'll be moving back to Arkansas in a few months, probably end of February, when my adopted daughter Kitten gets her tax return and can afford teh trp to come get me. She went out to take a look at the house I'll be renting and met this adorable little waif at the house, miserably wailing for food and attention.

Took her home, washed her, fed her, found out Kyra's a loving, snuggly, sociable cat who likes everyone, human or animal. She's going to be Ari's new companion. I've been thinking of finding him a playmate for a long time and in she walked. The best cats pick themselves.

Ari tends to get along well with female cats and kittens, while Kyra loves everybody, purrs, greets and gets cuddly. I think they'll get along well! So here's the start of sketching my new model - and her unusual markings. She has points, but she's a calico in the dark areas! Dark brown ears and tail, ginger patches next to the brown and one ginger hind foot, very pale body and white patches within her points. One little brown spot on her pink nose. Sweet, cute and unique!

This is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

Ari Cat from Life

Ari Cat from Life

8" square Tombow grays on sketchbook

I'll probably add more cat gestures to this page or something, he moved before I could get his body in. This is a typical life pose. He turned his head twice looking to the side and I had to wait for him to look back, then got up and walked away to eat. After all I was only drawing him, not offering yogurt or reaching to pet him. He's not always that keen on posing!

But he will sometimes come back to a pose again and again. I don't think he really minds it either, just knows I need to learn to draw fast!

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!

Sketches of Ari Cat and Tree Scene

Eleven Dots 1

Abstract Art Exercise in red and black pen on paper.

Yesterday I caught up for the day before by doing an abstract art exercise from an ebook I downloaded. It looked fun and came out surprisingly well, though completing it needed repeating it in a second color. Fun to just get creative without worrying about what it is.

Eleven Dots 2

Tombow pen on sketch paper

Did the exercise again this time playing differently with the line and forms created by the line. Resulted in a completely different abstract pattern that also worked. It surprised me how well this works as a starting point, doing it twice generated such completely different results.

Then I sketched my cat from life but didn't snap a photo or post it anywhere, was sort of doing ahead for today in case I was tired. Today I finished that page with another tree demo - this time a contour drawing to show more clearly that trees thicken toward the base and narrow toward the tips, always branching smaller and smaller without bulges. Unless the tree has a tumor like an oak gall or something, but those have a particular look and aren't an upside down gradual swelling. I threw in a couple of landscape elements and more roots this time because the same principle applies to tree roots except sometimes they dive into the ground and come up again. Played with very obvious perspective diminishing cloud sizes as they moved toward the horizon and dong the waves by the sea very small to show how high the crag the tree's on is.

Worked rater well, I think. Might rearrange it a little but it's a cool design. I'm starting to just make things up and I like that.

Tree Scene and Ari Cat Page

Tombow pen on 8 1/2" x 11" sketch paper.

Cat Portrait and Crooked Tree

 "Croggers" memorial cat portrait

Derwent Graphitint pencils and wash on paper

Crooked Tree Demo 

8 1/2" x 11" pen on paper

Croggers the cat was beautiful and his photo was posted for this weekend's Weekend Drawing Event at WetCanvas. I felt for the little guy and did a portrait drawing, paying close attention to markings and exact features and expression. Successful portrait, and he has that sweet meditative look that well.

Derwent Graphitint are tinted graphite watersoluble pencils, very soft, 8B softness. They dissolve fast and color brightens with water. I used them on my large Moleskine watercolor journal.

Then did a promised lesson on tree anatomy and shadow direction for my new student. She'd done a scene with one bare tree in an autumn landscape.  I let this be a winter one and implied snow with the bushes bending and stark values of the black on white. Could have added blue shadows, didn't, just kept it simple. But I like the design and may develop it into a more refined painting or drawing.

Portrait of Ari Cat with White Whiskers

"White Whiskers" cat portrait

7" square pen and watercolor on paper

Still more Pentel Pocket Brush Pen and Daniel Smith watercolor on Stillman and Birn Delta journal. I turned to my favorite subject throughout the past fifteen years, Ari Cat, my color point long hair. Started penciling from my avatar photo on Google Hangout, got the general outline, did his face from memory.

He was in my lap at the time with his face pressed down to my leg, so I couldn't exactly check the real cat's features till he got up. Happily, I got it right on the penciling! Checked when he got up and then inked... and decided this time he needed his true white whiskers rather than my just flicking them in black with Pigma Micron pen.

Some time ago, a long tme ago actually, I bought an Alvin Ruling Pen from Dick Blick along with a lot of other stuff. Like many small supplies it got tucked in a drawer and forgotten, came with me on the move and today I got fed up with translucent white gel pens that skip and dry up, white watercolor that comes out transparent and makes thick brush lines, and remembered I had it. Took it out and tried it with liquefied Caran d'Ache Neocolor II white.

That did the trick! Clean straight fine lines in a strong opaque white that went right over inked black passages. I loved it. Now it's sitting right out with my pen ready to use any time and I know what white is opaque enough to use with it. Another triumph!

Maisy Cat tabby point siamese

Maisy Cat Portrait

tabby point Siamese, photo by Lucylove on WC

Pentel Pocket Brush Pen and watercolor again for a cat portrait from a photo by Lucylove on WetCanvas.com - there are two references and I will probably also sketch Reclining Maisy too.

This was a little different in technique. I went for a smooth graceful line this time, went a little heavy and succeeded in getting almost a Disney or anime' look withot losing the likeness or her proportions. Much of that is her very young cat proportions, huge ears and big eyes. She looked dainty to me and I loved the stripes of her mask.

So let's see how she looks in another position tomorrow or Tuesday!

Pen Drawings

Leaves from Life in watercolor pencil and

Cat Gargoyle - imagination, brush pen 

Mother Bird and Ari Cat Portrait

Pentel Pocket Brush Pen

These are two facing pages in my pocket Moleskine watercolor journal. I did the page with the leaves sketch out in the clinic garden yesterday, washed that drawing at home and sketched the Cat Gargoyle directly with pen next to it. Also penciled hte mother bird from a video in the waiting room but changed her species from eagle to something less predatory and added a chick from memory. Penciled Ari from one of my recent photos in the waiting room.

Inked both of them today so this is my daily sketching - which may expand to more art later on, but if it doesn't, I'm still keeping up. Yesterday was extremely productive, the weather was just with me! Today, I'm a little slowed down. Pressure changes are what does that mostly, it can seem nice out or even the same but as weather systems move, wham, I suddenly lose most of my body energy. This gets frustrating as pain can reduce fine motor control on my hand. Sometimes I feel like painting or sketching yet know I'm not going to be able to control the tools. Worst part of the disability along with poor eyesight.