Field trip!

Tomorrow morning early I am leaving with a number of the lovely POBL women of my critique group for a field trip.

We are heading up to Port Townsend ("Victorian Seaport & Arts Community") to visit the illustrious Richard Jesse Watson and get a tour of his studio and various other fun-filled artistic activities.

It's a long enough drive/ferry/more driving that the bulk of us are staying the night up there and coming home later on Saturday after some more art and main-street shopping.

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I will report more fully upon my return!

Oh, Shine already!

Shiny, sunny meadow spot - wishful thinking in gloomy, chilly January weather, when the sunlight is a rarity and grey drizzle, the norm.

But, fret not! Cheer is on the way! In case you have missed the 'Internet phenomenon' that is flamboyant musician Chris Dane Owens with his glittery green guitar and his lavishly cheesy music video, Shine:




If you are now scratching your head in bewilderment (or feel the need to scour your eyeballs), there is help. Hilarious translation of the jump-cut video storyline is provided over on tor.com. Or you can read the 'official' description by the ivory-maned artist here. (which is almost a let down after the first, brilliant explanation).

Shine on, people!

Rainbow quiz

I'm a sucker for color, and when I saw this quiz on Tart's Tales blog I wanted to play along.

(and when you get the results, they come with lovely bands of applicable color. Don't know why they refuse to show up here. pout. So, you get a very simple, silly spot illustration for today).

Your rainbow is intensely shaded blue, white, and green.

What is says about you: You are a contemplative person. You feel strong ties to nature and your mood changes with its cycles. Those around you admire your fresh outlook and vitality. You share hobbies with friends and like trying to fit into their routines.

Find the colors of your rainbow at spacefem.com.

This probably would be my favorite color family. Don't know about me 'trying to fit into my friends' routines' though... (or having much of a fresh outlook if it comes to that).

It's quick. Try it and see what you think.

Birds in winter -

Saw an armful of robins in the front yard today. First gathering I've seen of them this year. That's supposed to mean spring is on its way, isn't it? Yet, we have snow and below freezing temperatures once again.

The chickens can't quite figure out what to make of it all. Their water freezes in their container - much to their bewilderment. They are bored silly and are trying to dig themselves out of their coop, so I do try to let them out for bit. But with weather like this, they find that the dirt is frozen pretty solid, so fruitless to scratch at, and every thing green and therefore potentially edible in the yard is covered with chilly white snow. Curses! Foiled. Indignities most fowl!

There needs to be a better word for a collection of robins. A portent of robins? A premonition? A precursor? A presentiment? Anything that makes it feel like spring will come again! Soon please!

(For a lovely list of collective nouns for birds - from which robin is conspicuously absent - see here).

"..to sleep, perchance to dream?..."

The post-project-lurgy continues relatively unabated. All I seem to want to do is sleep. Wish it was making more of a difference.

So as to not feel completely like a slug, I am spending a few hours sitting in the studio, keeping up with email and sorting through notebooks and old issues of Artist's Magazine and Realms of Fantasy, etc... Lots of backlogged filing.

Feeling some blog-neglect-related guilt as well, it occurs to me that I have about eleventy-hundred spot illustrations that have been published and I have no real venue to ever use them for again. So, if there is any interest, I may attempt posting a-spot-a-day or some thing until I have depleted my vast spot store.

So, what do you think? Any interest? (I'll check back later. Bed is calling).

No day is so bad it can't be fixed with a nap. ~Carrie Snow

ergh... zombies...

I think i am experiencing post-project-body-implosion. By mid-day Saturday (halfway through my Figure Drawing Workshop weekend) I started seriously feeling the ick - so much so, (and after a full night of no-sleep-due-to-raging-sore-throat-and-incessant-coughing) that I didn't even attempt the third day of it. Have been mostly drinking medicinal tea and garlicky chicken soup and reading in bed, but am still totally dragging and using up my supply of Kleenex boxes...

I think the zombie kitttehs haz eaten mah BRAINZ! (or at least my immune system. going back to bed now...)

Life Drawing Workshop -

After the past three years of nearly non-stop illustrating, I've decided that I'd really like to focus some time on drawing from life - especially the human figure. To that end, as I've mentioned before I've volunteered to monitor figure drawing several times a month at a local art studio. And when I finished this latest illustration job I signed up for a three day Figure Drawing Workshop with fabulous local artist Ned Mueller. Ned says he's been making art for over 60 years, 25 of which were as an illustrator, so I was especially interested in learning more about his approach. His life drawings are beautiful.

Ironically, the model didn't show up today (one of my ongoing nightmares of monitoring), so instead we got an overview of portraiture (and used classmates as models. Here is Ned demonstrating. Perfect, gorgeous and fast).

It was a good review both of principles and of Ned's particular techniques - he uses bistre conte on smooth newsprint, with a kneaded eraser for highlights.

Might I say that smooth newsprint is *awesome*! I've always struggled with conte, but I've always used rough newsprint, so it was very unfriendly and nearly impossible to pull out highlights from. Not so with the smooth! It is lovely and fast. (I got some teacher input on this one so that I could better follow his eye for nuance).

And this regal class member posed for our last view of the day -

I did this one entirely on my own. I would have liked about another 5 minutes to resolve a few more things more accurately, but it was great fun overall. Hopefully the model will show up tomorrow and we'll get to work on the entire figure.

It'll be a full weekend. And I've still to dig out my studio, not to mention tackle the remainder of the house. So I thoroughly apologize to all you bloggers whose blogs I am not keeping up with right now. I do hope to return to the realm of mutual blogland fairly soon.

on endings....

Here I was at 5:30am (I have not been to bed yet, mind you) ironing my stack of illustrations flat, so that I can scan, label, coversheet, and package them up for posting after the sun comes up...

This is the last of this batch of books (the interiors of book #8). I have a break for a couple of months with which to sleep, clean, generally catch-up...

O lap-top, I love you. You have kept me company lo these many months of studio-servitude. The twitter, the facebook, the youtube and hulu have kept me from feeling completely isolated (and stark raving-mad from painting monotony!), but now my dear, I am going to turn you off for a bit and clean/read/walk/nap/maybe see some 'real' people?! I'll be back when the feeling returns to the bottom half of my body...