A Springtime Fall / Sketch

5x7 inches, pen and ink, watercolor wash, for Monthly Sketch Project

I'm still evaluating which online challenge sites appeal to me most.  I'm asking myself how appealing and easy to use the reference photos are (if that is the format of that particular challenge) how long I have to complete the project, how easy it is to post, and how much feedback I get from other people who choose to participate there.

Even though the trees in my yard are just budding out, this reference photo was of an autumn scene.  I considered making my response into a painting, but in the end decided if the site says "sketch project," then I would try a sketch.  I probably spent an hour and a half on it, and liked it better before I added color.  The original reference photo was pretty, and offered some possibilities for learning to simplify shapes and deal with shadows, both good things.  Unfortunately, the resolution of the photo was low, so there was more inventing going on in this sketch than I really wanted.  At least that's the excuse I'm going with for my slap-dash approach to the drawing.  Still, it's good practice to be forced into invention, and I don't always have to slave over everything I produce.  I still may go back and add darker values to the tree trunks.

Two More Online Challenges

5x7 inches, for Illustration Friday: Expired, pen and ink, watercolor

I thought I'd post a couple of small illustrations I created in my watercolor notebook this week for online art challenges.  I've been interested in Illustration Friday for ages, since it is so well organized and so many people post their work on the site.  While some challenges are very specific (draw your shoes), the ideas at Illustration Friday are all open-ended.  They can be interpreted lots of ways, and they are!  This week the topic  is "Expired."  I thought about lots of things that expire: dairy products, coupons and sales, parking meters, people.  In the end a broken doll I had been saving for some sort of mixed media assemblage (yet to be created) called out to me.  I drew her amongst the twigs, dead leaves, and green shoots in my garden, a sort of plastic armless Venus.  Her life as a play toy has expired, but she lives on here.  The most challenging part of participating on this site for me was creating a 50x50 pixel thumbnail.  It took longer for me to figure that out than it did to draw all the teeny circles on the illustration.

5x7 inches, pen and ink, watercolor acrylic ink, created for Inspiration All Around Us

Another online challenge to try is a fairly new one entitled Inspiration All Around Us.  An Oregon artist named Dana Marie has begun posting reference photos every other Tuesday for people to interpret in any way they want.  In order to participate in this site you need to send her an email and ask to join the group, then you can post your drawing or paintings.  I did this little piece fairly quickly in my Moleskine watercolor notebook, first a pen and ink sketch, then watercolor for the waterlily blossom and leaves.  I did a dark blue background at first, but decided that I needed a darker value to set off the white blossom, so added a wash of black acrylic ink, letting some blue layer peek through.

I'm having a good time participating in these challenges, though I doubt I will participate in every one, every time.  For one thing, in order to get comments from other people, it's just courtesy to leave comments for other posters. That takes time.  But giving and receiving feedback is half the fun of joining these groups in the first place.  The other half is having a practically unlimited stock of ideas for creating art.

From the Art Institute of Chicago

On my birthday back in December Dick promised me a day trip to Chicago and the Art Institute.  I wanted to see the new modern wing, and to revisit some "old friends."   We drove to Harvard, Illinois, about a half hour from here, and took the Metra line to downtown Chicago.  The trip is a hundred miles, and takes a couple hours.  It was a nice day, clear, weather in the 40s, so we walked to Michigan Avenue, and got in for free, since the museum had a promotion of every day in February free admission.

It is OK to take photos in the museum as long as no flash is  used, so I took all sort of pictures of sculptures, and have only now gotten around to using them to add in my little watercolor sketchbook.  I want to do some more, but I'm not sure I'll have time before our trip to Italy, and after that I bet I'll want to work on other sketches.

Anyway, we explored all day, taking an hour off for lunch at a nearby Italian restaurant, and then returning to see how much more we could see.  I adore the Art Institute, but it is so huge that I feel bad about how little time I end up really looking at the paintings and sculpture.  By the time we walked back to the train station I was footsore and weary to the bone.  Good practice for Italy.

Recent Illustrated Journal Entries

This blog celebrated its second birthday April 17th. Happy belated birthday to the Late B(l)oomer!

It occurred to me that if I wanted to get better at doing travel journals, I'd better do some practicing. So, these are two pages from a recent trip to Madison's Olbrich gardens. I worked from snapshots, and tried my best to keep them simple. I wanted a combination of sketches, in this case of the garden's beautiful Thai pavilion, and information. I only used a Pitt artist pen and a grey brush marker. My next real chance to do travel journaling will be May 9th, when I travel on Amtrak to Washington state.

On a sadder note, my cousin called me from South Carolina to say that my uncle, my dad's only sibling, passed away this morning. Although he had an accent from decades of living in the South, he looked a lot like my Dad, who died in 1983. I counted on Uncle Gene for that resemblance, and for the family stories he knew and was happy to share. I'll miss him.

Recent Watercolor Sketches

Over the holidays I purchased a watercolor Moleskine and I am enjoying the sketchbook very much.  This one is larger than the one I saw a few months ago, with no perforations for removing the painting.  These two sketches were adapted from online news photos of the Obama inauguration.  I don't usually like to work from photos taken by other people, but on January 20th we were at home, which probably was the best place to see the festivities.  Here are Yo Yo Ma and Aretha, both looking very cold indeed.  At least Aretha had a coat, gloves and a hat.

Last Page in a Sketchbook

watercolor, acrylic, ink in Moleskine sketchbook

This sketch started out as a plan for a collage. I have an illustration board prepared, and I've gotten the papers ready, but I realized that I needed to understand what I planned to do with this complicated shape. I played and played, and finally I realized I had to just step away from the whole thing. Maybe I need a closeup, something that isn't as confusing as all the droopy branches in this plant. I'll try again later this week.
I like the plant, when I'm not trying to draw or paint it. The Christmas cactus (Zygocactus) is originally from South American jungles. Unlike a true cactus, this plant cannot go very long without water. It loves our glassed in porch with its bright indirect light and cool temperature. I read that the Christmas cactus likes temperatures around 55 degrees at night in order for it to bloom, so the porch is perfect. I trimmed some of the bracts off last spring and just popped them into outdoor planters. They rooted and grew, though none of the cuttings is blooming yet. The plant does best with well drained soil, and when it is established and rootbound.

On another note, I'm looking forward to tomorrow, when I have lunch with some retired teacher friends, pick up a framed painting that I want to give as a gift, and get my Mac back from the shop. It has been gone for over a week, and I've been using my husband's computer. I can't wait to get my files and my playlist back home. I'm guessing he can't wait to get me off his machine.

More Tyvek Sketches

I'm still playing with the Priority Mail envelope I cut up and recycled as free art material.  This one is supposed to be one of the roosters from Old World Wisconsin, but he looks at little strange, too compact somehow.  I do like the texture the Tyvek "paper" gives to the background.

This one also has issues, one being the coloring book effect of the black Micron pen with the wataercolor and marker washes.  I used both regular watercolor and TomBow markers.  I like the markers because they have both a fine pointed end and a brush end, and can be softened with a brush and clear water.

Old World Wisconsin, and a New Material

watercolor on Tyvek

This past week we took a drive through the Kettle Moraine of southern Wisconsin to do some leaf peeping.  Our drive took us through the little town of Eagle, so we decided to stop at Old World Wisconsin, a living history site created by the State Historical Society back in the 1970s. We hadn't been there in ages, maybe fifteen years.  The last time I was there it was with over a hundred eighth graders.  Anyway, it was a beautiful fall day for walking around all the farmsteads, churches, and stores of Yankee, Norwegian, Polish and other immigrant groups. Since it was midweek, there were no crowds, only a couple school groups.  At most houses the volunteers had stoves burning, and in several food was cooking.  The garden produce was being brought inside, and at least one pig had been turned into hams and sausages, and was smoking. This sow was enjoying the sunshine and rooting happily in some foliage.  She came trotting over when I called her, and enjoyed having her ears scratched.  I love farm animals, and there were plenty to see, oxen, horses, and chickens.

Our walk through the historic site took us past a large marsh where the colorful trees were reflected in the water.

At one farmstead I met a man who was dressed for the cool weather in a wool overcoat and knotted scarf.  I complimented him on his mustache, and he let me take his picture.  I hope to do more with his picture later. 

This fast sketch, like the two above it were experiments in using watercolor on Tyvek.  I met an artist near Mineral Point recently who was using the material in mixed media projects.  She told me that she recycled old Priority Mail envelopes, so I tried cutting up one I found at home into post card-size pieces.  Then I did loose watercolor washes, and finished up with Micron pen.  I like that pen for line work, since it comes in various widths, and it dries waterproof.  On the picture of the sow I also layered in some TomBow marker, which blended well with the watercolor, and since it is not waterproof, allowed me to soften some edges.  The Tyvek is a manmade material, and seems to have qualities of both paper and material.  The watercolor soaked in, but I also could soften and lift color fairly easily.  I spray mounted the finished pictures into my sketchbook.

Prickly Garden Problems

I recently met Teri C., an online friend who loves cactus plants, and I wanted to draw a cactus for her.  This pen and ink and watercolor drawing isn't too bad, if you ignore the pot.  I looked up this cactus online, and I think it is a Mexican barrel cactus.  When I bought it, ages ago, it was about the size of a softball, but it has grown to the size of a cantaloupe, and has begun flowering in the summer.  It likes summering outside, though sometimes I have to be careful it doesn't get too much water. I repot it every year to two, and the spines are so lethal that I began using leather gloves to handle it.  Two days ago I moved it, carefully, to the side of the house that gets more sun, hoping to encourage it to bloom again.  

I also moved a big potted geranium that wasn't blooming because, I imagine, the maples have grown so much that a formerly sunny spot now is partly shady.  To my horror, only hours later I discovered that the geranium had become a magnet for iridescent green beetles, and they were earnestly chewing the leaves down to the veins.  Japanese beetles.  I had never seen them before.  Since then I have gone out to the plant with a saucepan of soapy water, and sent scads of the critters on a sea cruise.  I imagine the kindest thing would be to just send the geranium back to Baby Jesus, and take away the beetle magnet, but I paid a bundle for the plant and hate to give up so easily.  We shall see.  If I were dedicated I'd sketch a dead bug, but frankly I don't want to look at one that closely.

New Sketches

pen and ink, watercolor pencil

In June I drove to Algoma to see my aunt and attend the doll show.  While I was there I went down to the harbor and took more reference photos.  I've loved the harbor on Lake Michigan since I was a child, but little by little the old fishing shanties that once lined the Anapee River where it enters Lake Michigan have been replaced with more modern buildings.  I might not object so much if the new buildings were as low as the shanties they replaced, but these tall pole buildings and condos really lack charm.  I mean to do a painting from my old photos and some historical photos I found, but maybe I don't know enough to make them really right.  I certainly don't know much about boats.

ball point pen, watercolor

I enjoy drawing in airports.  People there are usually oblivious to me drawing them.  They're immersed in a paperback, asleep, on the telephone, or busy with other personal electronics.  I never figured out what device this man was so busy working on. 

pen and ink, watercolor pencil

This heifer was hot and tired at the recent  Rock County 4-H fair.  Most of the cattle were resting the afternoon I wandered through their barn, though the goats were on their feet, begging for attention.  I enjoy drawing animals, love their shapes and angles. One of the things I noticed at the fair was how many animals come in black and white.  Cattle, of course, but also rabbits, chickens, pigs, and even goats.  At home my "tuxedo" cat is always formally attired in black and white, so I guess that color combination calls out to me.

June is Dairy Month

June is Dairy Month in Wisconsin. I grew up on a dairy farm which meant for eighteen years I drank gallons of whole milk, ate lots of cottage cheese, real butter, and had my hamburgers with cheddar, my baked potatoes with sour cream. I can only hope all this emphasis on dairy was good for my now middle-aged bones; it wasn’t so good for my waist and hip measurements. I didn’t taste skim milk or margarine until I went to college and roomed with a houseful of calorie conscious women; it was a real shock. I digress. Back in the 1960’s I was also a 4-H member, and we always did displays in local businesses for Dairy Month, poster about the health benefits of dairy, usually decorated with cheerful Holsteins. There was usually some sort of recipe contest featuring milk, cheese, or other dairy ingredients. This was pretty much before yoghurt was popular, so I know I didn’t have recipes featuring that. Buttermilk was as exotic as my family got.

I remember one dairy cooking contest I entered with my neighbor, a woman who lived a half a mile away in a house across the road from the end of our long gravel drive. Her goal was to sneak in a cake that featured butter flavoring instead of the real thing. I had a sour cream coffee cake I llked, though on contest day I accidentally doubled the butter (no fake stuff for me). I won in my area with the buttery coffeecake, and I think maybe the neighbor lady won something too. Five dollars each, and we got our name in the local newspaper.

Today I don’t overdose so much on butter or sour cream, but I find it hard to resist berry smoothies for breakfast. There are lots of possible variations, but this one is good. The amounts are variable, and a person can use any fruit in season. Put everything in a blender and drink up. This makes a couple big smoothies.

Banana Strawberry Orange Smoothie

• 1 banana
• 1 handful of strawberries
• 1 cup yoghurt
• 1/2 cup milk
• 1/2 cup orange juice
• a handful of ice cubes


The pen and ink drawing was done last summer at the Janesville Oasis. Bessie is a giant Guernsey cow made of fiberglass. She is something of a local tourist attraction, though the Oasis with its cheese shop fell to a bulldozer, soon to be replaced by a Menards.

Lost and Found, EDM Challenge #4

I was married in 1975, and one of my wedding gifts was a set of Noritake china from my Grandma Tess, the set she got when she married in the 1920’s. The pattern is Sultana, and there are cups, saucers, plates and bowls of various sizes, as well as serving pieces, for twelve people. The pattern has a yellow band decorated with white flowers, and black medallions with roses. Each piece is trimmed in gold, much worn these days. On most Sundays when I was a child our family drove to Elkhorn for a noon meal with my grandparents. It was never a dinner because my dad had to milk cows around 4:00 PM, and the timing wouldn’t work out. These noon meals were always served on this china. When I received the set I noticed there were eleven china cups, and one odd one. It turned out that my great grandmother, Grandma Smith, had broken a cup, and replaced it with one in a different pattern to make up for the accident. So, for years I searched around for a matching cup, flea markets, antique stores, later on the internet. I subscribed to Replacements.com, and finally this month the cup became available. So after years and years I have the complete set. Nobody had better break one of those cups! Actually it is very unlikely, considering we only use china once in blue moon. The sketch is done with Micron pen with Plume markers.

No Imelda Marcos

Remember the former Philipine First Lady, Imelda Marcos? The one with about 1,200 pairs of shoes? Well, I am not Imedla Marcos. The shoes in my sketch were my effort at high fashion, Barbie shoes, I called them. I saw high school girls flouncing all over school in them, women at resorts clamboring into boats with them, and I thought, "If they can, I can." I couldn't. I couldn't stand the way they clattered on sidewalks and slapped my heels. I couldn't stand the blisters across the top of my size 9AA foot, or the aching back. In fact, I could hardly stand at all. So I would put them on in the closet, pose in front of the mirror, and then put them backon the shelf. Finally I put them in the Goodwill bag. I am no Barbie - or Imelda.

I have some dressier shoes from my teaching days. It was always a challenge to find shoes that looked "professional" and still had some style and were comfortable enough to walk blocks and blocks, as I did every day in my rather large high school. So, I have some black mid height shoes, some dressier sandals, a couple of pairs of boots with heels in the low to mid height range. I have one pair of high heels I thought would dress up jeans, but I soon realized they were only practical for sitting sipping a cocktail, not walking anywhere. I did buy a trendy pair of linen colored wedges, but they mostly sit on the shelf looking cute. I can walk in them, so that's a plus.

These days my shoe choices are more practical. I wear my Birkies, three pairs in different colors for different pairs of jeans or shorts I might choose, a pair of brown Eastland brogans that keep my tootsies warm and dry when that is what is required. I have the newer cleaner pair of New Balance athletic shoes for my time at the athletic (arthritic?) club, and older pair for around the house, and a still older pair for the garden. I have my moosehide Minnetonka slippers, which will soon need a decent burial, and a equally well worn pair of Clarks clogs that also probably should be retired with honors. And that's it. One of the nice things about retirement for me is the way my needs are getting simpler and simpler. No more Barbie shoes for this Boomer.

From My Sketchbook

I have a love/hate relationship with my sketchbooks. It goes way back to high school when sketchbooks were a requirement for almost every art class, and to me that meant a whole little spiral book full of completed drawings. It didn't matter that the teacher told me something different, that it was a place to try things, to store ideas. I still am like that sometimes, though I am better about just sitting wherever I happen to be and drawing people, trees, or whatever is at hand and letting the lines look exploratory and imprecise. But it is hard for me. I want the drawing to look reasonable. I don't want people to come look while I'm working, and someone almost always wants to look. I work rather slowly, so people always move before I finish. Whine, whine. It has helped me to think of my sketchbook as more of a visual journal. Being free to write words in connection with images has freed me from thinking each sketch must be perfect. So now my little books are also filled with random thoughts, poems, recipes, and notes from classes I sometimes take. Rather like this blog.

Last summer I wanted to work on pen and ink drawings, something I don't do very often. I worked from my own photos. Here are my legs and feet in sandals.