I saw the sunrise

daylight

better hurry up!

It is so hard to believe that I live 2 blocks away from glorious sunrises on the Atlantic and yet I usually don't get over there early enough to enjoy them!

Peeking through the front door I could tell it today would be a beautiful sunrise. So I hurried down to the beach and caught these photos.  Then I came home and drew a shell that I found on the beach.

Chair Cats

Jennifer Edwards started a new weekly challenge to draw your life ....and today's inspiration was to draw your chair.

Well, that sounded easy enough till I realized I needed to move to another chair to draw my favorite coffee spot ... and as soon as I moved out, the cats moved in!

 As I was drawing the chair, Snicks sat in 2 different places, hence the 2 cats on the chair. Then Fry came and sat on the table in front of me totally blocking my view of the chair!

Fat Cat Fry

My brand new fat graphite 9B was sitting just waiting to be used, and I think I have a new favorite tool



Jennifer showed a bunch of different styles --- I would like to try them all. However, the cats insisted that chairs are not as much fun as cats.


Added a drawing of Mike's favorite Ikea chair --- it was perfect in the store, but really doesn't seem to work in any room of the house!

Weekly inspiration!

steps in the process

Lillian got me going before coffee today, and that is really an unusual thing for me!

Weeklyartlesson.com is always a source of inspiration. Last week Lillian discussed ellipses and how they work in art. This week she took it a step further by making them into flowers -- daisies first, then petaled flowers facing different ways.

 I went out in my yard and patterned some ellipses from a hibiscus plant, then came in and worked through her suggestions step by step. Go see her version, much more information!  link

Parakeet card for Rita

I drew this birthday card for Rita, we met in an art class. She enjoyed telling me all about her parakeet, and about her days teaching English. In her 80s, she is convinced that kids are just not the same anymore ... and she keeps encouraging me to retire.

New York City

 I dedicated a new sketch book to our travels to New York City.

Some people can sleep on the plane

I drew my pretzels before I ate them

Some people read on the plane

I drew this from the in-flight magazine

The little kids across the aisle were active

Some of the bridges going into Manhattan

Breakfast at Argo Tea ...
 I could see the statue of Columbus Circle out the window.

Close up of an angel on the monument

Hard to capture all the height and layers of buildings

Open Studio

James is a delightful model, and today he was dressed in a caftan --- wayyyy too many folds for someone who doesn't do fabric well, but I did my best, then drew everyone else while I was waiting for the muse to return!

Came home and played with pen and watercolor on top of my sketch.

Figure Drawing Class

I don't usually post from this class because we are drawing naked folks, and I don't want my blog to be rated R ... but today we focused on faces, hands and feet.

At the end of the class we all drew each other, and that was really fun although drawing clothing is HARD!

Open Studio Again - Pirate!

Oh did I have fun at Open Studio this week. We had a pirate, complete with a yellow headed amazon parrot on his arm.  Since I absolutely loved his boots, I gave up my original intention to use the session to practice portraits, and did a whole shot, planning to draw in a wine keg for him to sit on. At the moment he is suspended in space.

However, 2 hours later I really wanted to move on, so I did a portrait as well.

The watercolor was after I got home.  Just wanted to try it out!

My camera made his jacket more pink than it really was.