Two Red Irises in Watercolor Pencil

Two Red Irises

Watercolor pencil on pocket Moleskine Watercolor

These are the ones my granddaughter got photos of. They looked violet in the photos, but in person they're cold pink over a deep cold red, clearly in the magenta range. Lovely flowers, two of them bloomed at once and they are so striking. There may be white or pink ones out there too just waiting to bloom.

So I'm having a lot of fun lately with my favorite flowers. These life studies will be good when I want to put together a garden painting. It'll come together with various flowers I've done from life brought together in a composed landscape whether or not they bloomed at the same time or even in the same state. I have some irises from San Francisco too in my photo collection.

Recently my Kindle overflowed, so I went in using my computer and started deleting photos of artwork while keeping photo references of cats and flowers and landscapes. I'm not tossing them out, just copying into a USB key and then deleting to make room on my Kindle.

Edit: Later, Sascha brought these flowers in from beyond the goats' field aka The Dry Lot (it hasn't got a spring or well on it for them to drink from).

Unidentified light purple flowers and red clover photo

So naturally I sketched and painted these as well, from the vase on my desk. The vase is great too but not at that angle half hidden by a plastic travel coffee cup and stuff. So today got two pages in the little Moleskine Watercolor journal. Good thing I bought a couple of extra ones right before the move!

Light purple flower sprays, pen and watercolor

in pocket Moleskine Watercolor book.

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.

Dried Leaf in Pen and Watercolor

Dried Leaf in pen and watercolor

3" x 5" cold press watercolor paper.

Only three empty pages left in this little journal! It's cool coming to the end of one. I don't know what I'll do on the last pages but I love its thick paper that doesn't bleed through no matter what I do.

This morning I looked down and saw this leaf. It's old, most of them are just a reddish faded brown - but this one had deep violet-blue areas and patches, some in shadow and blued still more by reflected sky. I know sometimes they turn black as they degrade into soil, this was a stage in that process. So I had to draw and paint it, the unusual colors and sharp dark shadows grabbed me.

Lily in pen and ink

Lily in pen on watercolor paper, 3" x 5"

Close to the end on that little Strathmore Visual Journal. I've got only four pages left but plenty of good life studies for reference in it. This lily came from my son in law's church, it had lots of buds and no open blooms when they gave it to him after the service on Easter Sunday. Now it's sitting out in the garden with three big white blossoms on it and I love it.

I've been getting photos but it's hard to get accurate values and details on a white object with a camera. The sketches are going to be a lot of help if I turn this into a painting. 

I'd like to get back to doing some pastels but need some time to rest up from all the medical overexertion lately. My knee got a sprain, ankle is starting to feel the stress, back is screaming including an area I didn't expect up by my neck because of the position I had to be in to get an MRI of my neck vertebrae. This is ugly and all I can do is ride it out. Tomorrow will be worse, second day after overexertion always is. I've got a bad feeling I might be stuck as a full time patient for some time due to overly proactive new doctor, and I'm skeptical about whether any of this will actually be worth it in the long run.

Enough grumbling for now. I'm still going to try for something in pastels as soon as I'm up to it, and I dearly want to start experimenting with my new Bombay India Inks and dip pens. 24 colors in lightfast pigmented ink should give me some spectacular results in pen-watercolor or just colorful pen work!

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!

Pen Drawing, Waiting Room Plant with Shiny Black Pot

Plant with Pot, pen on watercolor paper, 3" x 5"

My past two weeks have been a nightmare of living with insufficient pain management. I had one week without any medication, in which I wasn't capable of writing my name intelligibly, then the previous drawing was during the brief time I didn't realize the fill-in prescription from my primary care clinic was for half my standard dose. That left me with less than half function, plus I had to skip a couple of shifts entirely to catch up and still have two pills left to be medicated for my pain clinic appointment.

It's over. My new doctor at the pain clinic is good and I may even get some real improvements in my health over time. I won't go into boring detail about it but the sources of my chronic pain are multiple and a couple of those conditions may be more treatable now than the last time I talked to a doctor about them. It still grates on me that some treatments that could help me a lot are illegal in this state, particularly medical marijuana and its derivatives.

So please, support medical marijuana and marijuana legalization. Prohibition 2.0 has not succeeded any more than the alcohol version did, if anything it's raised the stakes and caused far more violence, crime, public expense and deaths than the first version did. It's ridiculous that even taking dangerous drugs gets worse penalties than murder, rape, robbery and other real crimes. 

Countries that legalized drugs and treat addiction as a medical issue, like Portugal, have seen real, positive results from their policies. Wish my country would come to its senses and follow that good example.

Anyway, I'm back on my meds and the weather's lightening up. I may be able to paint or draw today, cross your fingers on that. It's still better if I do it earlier in the day before nap time and the weather's cooperating. New post if I do get in an artwork. Hopefully will post sooner than last time.

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!

Feathers sketch

Feathers pen sketches on paper

Some fountain pen sketches of two loose feathers picked up outside. The chickens molt and their feathers float around the yard, one was curled and fluffy, the other straight and smooth. One has a gorgeous green iridescence over black that I will paint one day, the black chickens are so spectacular, the other feather was nearly white but I didn't try to convey value.

Still down with a pretty bad bug, very annoyed to be sick with so much going on and so many artistic things I want to do.

Using my fountain pen daily should help avoid its drying out and clogging, even if I only scribble or doodle.

Cats and Other Life Drawings

 Cats in Pen 3 1/2" x 5"

 Hens and small objects in fountain pen

These two pages are today's art. I've come down with a brutal cold that has me exhausted, aching, snuffling, miserable and nauseated. Yet today I got outside ad sketched with a fountain pen my friend Stan gave me - it's awesome. I love the expressive line. Fountain pens are unique for sketching and give a livelier line than Pigma Microns.

Pencil sketch of trees on printer paper

Yesterday I started Johannes Vloothuis's class "Essentials of Drawing Landscapes." He insisted on our using printer paper, so I turned over a Blick package inventory list and used that. It had to do with the texture of the paper being smoother than vellum drawing paper. His sketch methods are quirky and unique to him but fascinating.

Unfortunately due to the bug I fell asleep after two hours of class, so I will have to catch up on it by downloading. Managed to attend half of it though!

I hate being sick and will still struggle to do daily art.

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!

Goat and Cat Pen Drawings

 Nubian goat Cara resting, from memory in pen

Nubian Goat Cara resting, Ari Cat full body and face, all from life, 

Today was an exercise in visual memory. I stepped outdoors for a smoke and saw Cara the Nubian Goat resting in the goat pen on her side. She looked interesting and though her features were hard to see in the light, she made a great silhouette with her pale gray ear distinctive. So I studied the lines of her shape, just watched her for a while, then came in and drew her immediately.

If you do this with things that you see outdoors or on the road, it speeds up life drawing a lot. You're not at a loss when the bird or animal moves. Very often life drawings get finished with the memory of a pose I just saw because the stupid bird will fly away or the cat will roll over and tuck his head down so that a second sketch would just be a furry rounded lump.

Naturally I was curious about how accurate my memory drawing was, so I went back outside to see if Cara had moved. She hadn't moved much, though she stretched her neck out to look at me. I think she'd been watching the road before, her neck wasn't that long at first. Sketched her fast outdoors, then came in and saw my fuzzy boy crashed on the back of our futon. Had to sketch the beautiful, contented Ari cat again, he just demands that sometimes with his beauty. 

He's now in an un-drawable pose up on top of the bookcase with his fluffy knees up, back a soft curve between them and tail tucked under his butt - sort of a furry lump slopping over the edge and recognizable more by color than anything else. Otherwise I might stop for yet another life drawing!

Both of these pages are on my Borden & Riley Drawing Pad, sized 2 1/2" x 3 1/2" and perforated. I love those little drawing pads, they are so convenient for life drawings and tempt me to sketch immediately by not being so large I'd have to do a lot of things to fill a page or work large. For anyone who likes to work small they're wonderful. Unfortunately, Blick discontinued them so I don't know where else I can get them. May have to go back to cutting ATC/ACEO blanks out of larger paper or buying those in packs.

I'm back to daily art again, what a relief! The big scroll project occupied me to the extent of blocking out the impulse to draw anything else until I finally decided to sketch first before working on the scroll. I'm not used to large projects any more, though I was back when I used to do scrolls regularly. Now I'm going to do more of them and try to establish a rhythm of working on longer projects. I'll still post them when they're done and progress photos when I need to say to myself "I got something done!"

Scroll progress is part of daily art. Large projects don't need to be completed to count as daily art. I must get used to that idea and not get intimidated by them!

Animal sketches and nature

 Gum Ball, Horse and Rooster Page pen and ink

Horse and Goat line drawings, pen on paper

Pigma micron pens and a small Pentalic wirebound journal in hand, yesterday I got in some good drawings. The first 3 1/2" x 5" page has a Gum Ball - seed head from a sweet gum tree - drawn carefully in pen and ink with stark black shading for its shadowed half. It looked really interesting. Same page I sketched a horse from a small plastic model Sascha lent me and a rooster from my own photo. The rooster's fairly detailed and recognizable, he's the sweet tame one who's not good for breeding because he's an odd mix instead of a pure Lavender Marin. 

Unfortunately, roosters can't be neutered without an operation harder than spaying a female cat, vets just can't do it with how they're built. So he's probably for the pot since he shouldn't breed. Sad really.

Second sketch page has a horse from life just in a clean contour drawing above a La Mancha goat buck also in contour drawing. I could paint either with any color or markings I wanted but kept those drawings simple. I'm still familiarizing myself with their anatomy. 

As I go out on horse shoeing trips with my daughter Kitten, I'll be doing more horse gestures and other farm animals. This is fun. Got a cool photo of our own goat Kara, the pretty horned one. She's black with pale gray-white ears and a slightly crooked horn, all the other goats are dehorned so I'll be basing goat horns mostly on Kara's. She's a different breed from the others too but I don't remember off hand, will post when I ask again since I forgot. Heh, fibro fog zaps my memory on too many things but the body proportions of the farm creatures are starting to become familiar!

Equine Studies

 Left side page, pencil on paper

Right side page, pencil on paper

Large watercolor Moleskine journal.

I did these pages a couple of days ago while out at one of my daughter's horse shoeing stops. Stu is a show horse, very beautiful and graceful. He was well behaved while his owner held his head and my daughter trimmed his hooves and nailed his new shoes on. She actually did a bunch of horses that day but my fibro caught up with me so I didn't do any more sketches.

I meant to pen and watercolor these, but once I was finished I decided I liked the look of the pencil drawings as themselves. Sometimes that happens even in a watercolor journal.

It's part of art to know when to stop. These pages are good in themselves and while I may work from them or from any sketch on them, graphite lasts as well as anything else I could put on them. Might spray fixative since I'm keeping the graphite but I'll take it outdoors in the daytime for that.

Having finally gotten all moved in, I shouuld be posting more often now and will try to get back to daily art! It was hard for about a month, even though I did quite a few drawings getting photos wasn't always easy and sometimes I forgot to date them. So let's go forward from here!

Flowers and Gecko Page in Derwent Inktense

Flowers and Gecko Page

Derwent Inktense and Pigma Micron on Large Moleskine Watercolor Book

While rearranging my supplies and beginning to pack down for my move at the end of February, I found my 72 color Derwent Inktense set under a large stack of other supplies. This is the churn. I have a lot of good art supplies and that's one thing that's always kept me excited about them. If I leave them alone for a few months and immerse in others, when I come back to them it's like getting a new package from Blick.

It took a certain comfort level of supplies to reach that happy rotation level. I think some of it is seasonal and situational too. I have wonderful oil painting supplies and get tempted to use them whenever the weather leaves me frisky enough for setup and cleanup for oils... but at that point I also need to have the space to really spread out. I need a place to hang paintings to dry for weeks without choking on the fumes or bumping into them. Happily, next Spring I'll be living in a nice rural house with a studio that's not also my bedroom! I will have enough space to set up easels and work larger, to get layered and work on several paintings at once (all up above the cat's easy reach) and so I'll finally be able to use that glorious holiday set of Winsor & Newton Artists' Oils that I picked up right before I moved to San Francisco.

One of the fun results of the churn is that if I spend months working in other mediums, I come back to something difficult with more control and better skills. Derwent Inktense are very strong watersoluble pencils, well named, and when washed they are permanent. Anything that didn't dissolve still might smear but I can glaze color over color with them, I can pull color off the tips with a water brush and mix like inks or just wash over a drawing for the results I got this time with the little gecko.

He's sitting on a soda can. I loved the reference for that, he's so tiny. Even smaller than the anoles I had in my house in New Orleans and even more colorful with his red patches. My cats never caught the anoles because they weren't stupid, they climbed the walls and stayed out of reach. But they often came in my house and always brightened my stay. I like little lizards and they do cut down on flies too!

So here's today and yesterday's daily art. The novel's finished and December's going to be full of art!

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!

Landscape with Tree

Tree on a Hillside

3 1/2" x 5 1/2" pen on paper

Went out today for my clinic visit, saw this beautiful tree as the van went past it. Sketched fast to block in its general shape in pencil, then started inking details and decided to create a background out in nature with some more distant trees over the edge of a hill. Put the smaller darker one behind it to give contrast to the pale trunk and foliage and liked that, inked it in.

Sometimes a drawing begins with a life drawing and everything else in the picture is composed from memory to set it off. That's what this one is. I like how it came out. Slopes like that are common in San Francisco so this is really a combination of several views.

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.

Cat Sketches Page

Yesterday's cat sketch, under two previously posted ones. Also some saplings sketched after a lesson by Johannes Vloothuis on how to distract from it if you have to cross a couple of trees in a background. Ways to liven it up and keep it from just looking like an X including twigs, protrusions, adding more twigs, lots of goofing around to give an impression of tangled twigs.

Ari slept on my pants in the seat of my power scooter and stayed there a good long time. He looked so sweet cuddled up on my pants. He likes laying on my laundry. Many cats will sleep in laundry, it's because they know your scent and think of you as family. Sleeping where their loved ones were before is a comforting situation for a cat.

Maybe it is for people too, if you've ever been married and gotten used to the other hollow in the bed it's that kind of thing.