Although I have been drawing a little bit lately, I haven't taken the time to post until now. These are the next three Everyday Matters challenges, plus Challenge #1, Draw a Shoe. One of my goals for the upcoming year is to work through all the Everyday Matters drawing challenges as a method for practicing drawing from life. A practice I desperately need. All of these drawings are in my little 'hand.book' journal and drawn with an inexpensive mechanical pencil except the first, #149, where I also used a Sketch and Wash pencil. I would like to become comfortable with the most basic of drawing mediums, graphite, before moving on. This is my goal, with drawing from life, anyway. Besides, I like seeing what can be done with just a pencil. This challenge, #149, was to draw a broom. This is a drawing of my drafting brush which I use like a broom. It sweeps away all the eraser crumbs from my drawing board. All the mistakes and false starts. Gone. I bought this drafting brush as a part of the required supplies for some early college art course. That's how long I've had it, sweeping away all of my errors over the years.
For EDM challenge #150, Draw a Candle, I drew a couple of beeswax candles made by kiddo.
EDM challenge #1, Draw a Shoe. I've had these shoes forever. Probably since 1991. Hubby got them for me one Christmas. I've worn them gardening, around town, and walking on the beach. They were the only shoes I could wear when I was pregnant with kiddo, my feet were so swollen. They saw me through though. I still wear them around the house and yard in the summer. And to the beach.
EDM #151, Pick any previous challenge and give it a holiday twist. I went with challenge #147, Something Made of Wood, and drew this little Nutcracker. This is one of kiddo's Nutcrackers from her collection. She collects Nutcrackers because she has danced in the Nutcracker Ballet every year since she was three. That's six years now. Wow. Where does the time go?
Holiday GreetingsHere is the view from our deck this morning. A bit of snow on branches and rhododendron leaves, fog swallowing the surrounding hillsides. As I look out my window now, the fog has moved in even thicker and everything has turned shades of gray. A perfect landscape for a Winter's Solstice eve. That last drawing inward before the earth marks it's turn again toward the sun, bringing back the light, a turning of the wheel of the year.
I've been thinking about that, the winter solstice and the sun making it's return, and the whole idea of expansion, a moving outward after a time of drawing in. (Just so you can follow along with the weird way my mind works, click on the links for your homework reading.) I remember a song we sang in elementary school choir for Christmas concerts, Do You Hear What I Hear?. You know the one, a sappy holiday tune but the concept fascinated me as a kid. It starts small and moves outward. The wind tells the lamb, the lamb tells the shepherd boy, the shepherd boy tells the king, and the king tells the people everywhere, 'pray for peace'. If only it were so simple. What if everyone, everywhere did stop what they were doing, for just one moment, and said a prayer for peace, perhaps all at the same moment? What might happen?
I know it's been some time since I last posted here so I will explain. You see, by now I had hoped to be entrenched in cookie baking, gift wrapping, and general holiday cheer along with beginning a new drawing or two and making art goals for the coming year, (more on that later). Instead I have been swamped with graphic design work of late. Well, 'swamped' is probably overstating it a bit, but busy non-the-less. Busy enough anyway. Which is a good thing for my pocketbook but not so good for art or cookie making time.
So, not to neglect this blog for too long I figured I'd give you an update on our Christmas tree's survival in the home of "He Who Cannot Be Trusted", also known as Sam, the springer spaniel. Amazingly, the tree has fared very well. A couple of accidental mishaps with broken ornaments but when you have a 9 year old kiddo cooped up in a small house on frigid cold days with a 60 pound dog that's to be expected.And it is a pretty tree. Probably the prettiest tree we've had ever. The canister vacuum cleaner spread around the tree when ever we leave the house has done the trick keeping Sammie away from the tree. Besides, look how sweet and innocent he looks.
But don't for one minute let that sweet face fool you. He has still been full of mischief. See that pillow he's cuddling? Last week we came home to a living room full of pillow stuffing like snow everywhere and one soggy pillow cover with a hole neatly chewed from its corner. Sigh.
And here's our other dog, Sara the Welsh Corgi, also known as 'The Princess", sharing a secret with Sammie. Sara never misbehaves. And she is sure to remind us of that fact, especially when she is scolding Sammie for some misdeed. Actually, she's quite the tattle-tale. What do you think she's telling Sammie here? Maybe,"You'd better watch out, you'd better not cry, you'd better not shout, I'm telling you why. . . . "
On The Forest Floor 6 x 6 inches colored pencil and Neocolor on pastel board copyright 2007 by Ann Thompson Nemcosky
I've had this on my drawing table for quite some time now. I finally managed to finish it the other evening, before this cold really hit me. It was done as a sort of companion piece, or part of a series I don't know which, to my previous piece, At The Water's Edge.
I did enjoy working on this, even though it is much more detailed and tightly rendered than what I am used to doing with images. The process of using the Neocolors as underpainting before coming back with colored pencils feels more like a painting process to me, so perhaps that's it. I am eager to do a few more "macro-landscapes" this way.
But mostly for right now I'd like to get over this monster cold and hopefully not pass it on to the rest of the household. Keep your fingers crossed on that one for me. And your hands washed. This weekend is my daughter's big dance performance and I so don't want her to get sick and miss it. She would be devastated.
This is this week's challenge from EDM, #148, to draw something soothing. There's not much soothing to me this week, and even this little drawing looks a bit stressed to me right now. But there it is. While I was fine on Monday, Tuesday hit me with a whopper of a sore throat and it's been all downhill since. Yesterday I sat propped on the sofa with my tissue box nearby and thought, well at least these are the tissues with lotion added - that's soothing. I'm sorry to say that by this evening, even the tissues are no longer soothing.
This challenge, #149, was to draw a broom. This is a drawing of my drafting brush which I use like a broom. It sweeps away all the eraser crumbs from my drawing board. All the mistakes and false starts. Gone. I bought this drafting brush as a part of the required supplies for some early college art course. That's how long I've had it, sweeping away all of my errors over the years.
For EDM challenge #150, Draw a Candle, I drew a couple of beeswax candles made by kiddo.
EDM challenge #1, Draw a Shoe. I've had these shoes forever. Probably since 1991. Hubby got them for me one Christmas. I've worn them gardening, around town, and walking on the beach. They were the only shoes I could wear when I was pregnant with kiddo, my feet were so swollen. They saw me through though. I still wear them around the house and yard in the summer. And to the beach.
