Tennis

EDM #71  Draw something representing your favorite sport. Tennis is by far my favorite sport. There are others I enjoy watching, but tennis is the only one I really understand, and the only one I really enjoy playing (besides Ping Pong, which is fantastic and I wish I had a table!). The dog is nothing to do with the sport--dogs are generally not welcome on the tennis court--but I do love how excited dogs get to pick up and carry things, particularly large sticks. This is something that always makes me smile. At first I just drew the tennis ball, but it needed something else to save it from a completely boring exercise. Enter the dog.

I have been doing lots of art, and it feels great! I've got all sorts of projects in the works and I'm having such a good time practicing different skills and feeling improvement. I have been neglecting the EDM list, however, and I don't want to do that anymore. My husband is a composer and he has a system for doing small compositional exercises to get warmed up in the morning. He rolls a die to tell him how large the ensemble is, then he rolls dice for which instruments are in the ensemble. Then he'll write a little thing--maybe it will be thrown away, maybe it will be used for something someday--that gets the creativity flowing. So I've made myself a little chart for some dice rolling, too. One roll tells me whether I'll do an Everyday Matters subject, a Julia Kay Portrait Party portrait, or a Virtual Paintout landscape. I might add illustrated recipes, too. The second roll tells me whether I'm doing it in pen, watercolor, charcoal, pencil, or colored pencils. I'm not letting myself spend more than 30-45 minutes or so on it, reminding myself that it's an exercise and it's just for fun! So far I have done two of these exercises. The first is a little watercolor (and ink, because why not?) of cows on the Isle of Wight. I didn't send it in to the Virtual Paintout website because I'd like to spend a little more time on something I send there, but I think it's a great idea for finding random landscapes. The second one is this ball and dog. We'll see how long I'm able to keep this going, but it's great fun for now!

My first landscape!

I haven't done any EDM Challenges for a bit, but I have been drawing and painting. Here's a little landscape I did - my first! It was a stormy sunset at the beach -- breezy and gorgeous -- and the little guy had a ball running around in the wind! I have been more interested in drawing people than scenery lately, so this is a nice combination. I do want to be better at landscapes, though. I feel like I don't know where to begin. There are so many tutorials online -- I'll start looking through those for tips, I guess, and then just start practicing.  I saw a blog yesterday where people paint scenes from Google street view. Some of the scenes they find are quite beautiful and interesting! If you're looking for a reason to do landscapes, you should try doing a painting and sending it in! I might have the guts to at some point....

Scary!

EDM Challenge #70  Draw what you're afraid of.  This is a brown recluse spider. Spiders are useful creatures, I know this. They keep other insect populations in check, they tend to keep to themselves, they spin incredible, beautiful webs--all good things. But still, they give me the heebie-jeebies. As I wrote on the drawing, we recently moved from Chicago to Florida, where spiders, snakes, and other creepy crawlies live year round. Now I imagine them popping out from every crevice! When I have recurring scary dreams, they tend to involve spiders or driving. Honestly, I'm much more afraid of scarier, more sobering things, but I draw for fun, mostly - so here's a spider!

This is the second drawing I've done since we've moved. I went to do a watercolor yesterday and couldn't find my brushes, so I grabbed the pens instead. It's been fun! Yesterday I did a portrait for the Julia Kay Portrait Party - someone's childhood photo. I've posted that here, too.

I do need to find those brushes, though....

Ginger Ale

EDM Challenge #69  Draw a beverage.  Here's another one of these recipe drawings. This ginger ale is so good. It tastes exactly the way ginger ale ought to, I think. Ginger ale is the only soda I really like, and being able to make it at home on a hot day is just fantastic.  The ingredients are ones that we tend to have on hand (and we keep a mason jar of the syrup in the fridge during the summer), so that makes it even more convenient. You could use less or more of the ginger syrup when you make the drink. Sometimes I'm in a sweet mood, but other times.... And do not leave out the lemon juice! Without it, it's just ginger syrup and sparkling water; but with lemon, it's ginger ale!

I really enjoy drawing recipes! When my husband and I got married, our wedding favor to everyone was a cookbook of our favorite recipes. I drew the cover from a photo of the two of us cooking. We've been wanting to do a "Wedding Cookbook, part II" for years. Maybe I can make an illustrated book to send out to our friends and families.

Bright, Shiny Off Button

EDM Challenge #68  Draw your computer.  When my son was very young, he often played around me while I worked with my computer on the sofa. Eventually he would make his way over, see that luminous off button calling to him, and reach out and push it. Supposedly hand-eye coordination and small motor skills aren't up to snuff yet when children are that young, but that didn't stop my little one from pushing that off button before I could get to him. He's much better now. I think he's realized that the payoff isn't awesome enough to keep making me crazy. That's what I hope, anyway.

This is just a 5B pencil and a tiny bit of blue pencil to make the "off" symbol more luminous and alluring!

Goldenrod

EDM Challenge #67  Draw something "Mom".  This is an illustrated recipe (I love illustrated recipes!) for Goldenrod, the delicious breakfast my grandmother made up for my mom when she was little.  My mom made up a different breakfast for me, which is called "Egg Brekky with Yogi and Bread" (that's what you get when you let the kid name the dish).  Egg Brekky is a soft-boiled egg (still warm), a piece of bread torn into small chunks, and a dollop of yoghurt (cold).  Then you mix it all together in a bowl and you get mush that has hot bits and cold bits and it's kind of bready and yoghurty and I absolutely love it.  I admit that Goldenrod is more classically delicious -- it's a white sauce, after all -- but Egg Brekky is dearer to my heart.  Goldenrod is a very "mom" thing to me, though, because it involves both my mom and my grandmother.  My son hasn't tried Egg Brekky or Goldenrod.  He tends to have unsweetened applesauce mixed with yoghurt (which is delicious, by the way).  I think I'd better come up with a comfort-food breakfast for him, though, to continue the tradition.

As I said above, I love illustrated recipes!  I've been wanting to do these for ages and I finally started a couple of days ago.  I've done two now, both with pen and watercolor, and I'm having a ball!  Be prepared for more to come!

A word about scanning.  I actually took this to a scanner and emailed it to myself from that, and it wasn't terribly good!  This recipe fared better than the other one, but they were both missing colors and details, despite my selecting proper settings for a drawing (I think).  I'm not really sure what to do about that.  For now, here's another dark, blurry photo.

No 'Plug Ugly' Here

EDM Challenge #66  Draw a fire hydrant.

I learned about "Plug Uglies" when I watched "Gangs of New York" several years ago.  As the sum of human knowledge is available on Wikipedia, I invite you to look there to learn more.  One thing that I didn't actually find in the Wikipedia article, which makes me doubt my memory, is that these Plug Uglies were employed by a particular fire company, and would go and sit on a fire plug in front of a raging fire to make sure a competing fire company didn't get there first and get the money.  I'm not going to get into the socialism debate because I'd rather politics not be a part of this blog, but I'm just glad the fire department operates differently now.

This is drawn from a photo I took this fall when our family was in line outside Hot Doug's (are you in Chicago?  Go there.  Yes, you'll stand in line.  It's worth it.).  There's a fire plug right in front, and it's one of the things my son was amused by while we waited to get inside (that's my mother-in-law steadying him...she wasn't in the drawing originally, but I added her in so you could see why his arm was pulled back).  Isn't his raincoat cute?  It's got alligators on it!

I'm in love with the 8B pencil.  It feels so good to draw with, and I love making the shadows.  I do not know how to effectively erase, though.  I'm using a Prismacolor plastic eraser, which came with my pencil kit, and I can't remove even the lightest lines and smudges.

The Nose Knows

EDM Challenge #65  Draw your nose, or a friend's, or a pet's.  Our toaster oven finally toasted its last a couple of days ago.  Since we also have no working oven at the moment, it's necessary that we get  a new toaster oven as soon as possible.  I took the opportunity while Shawn was researching toaster ovens online to draw his nose, and then I was having so much fun I just kept going!  I also occasionally weighed in on toaster ovens.  Truly, Shawn does not usually look this wild and intense -- I think I must have caught him while reading a particularly vitriolic review of  a poor oven.  I do find myself liking the slightly Rohan-ish look of him in this drawing.

I used a new charcoal pencil -- soft Pitt Charcoal by Faber-Castell.  It broke the first four times I tried to sharpen it and now it's a much shorter pencil than earlier this evening!  I hope it's okay now, because I enjoyed using it and I don't want it to disappear after a couple of sharpening sessions.

That's hard to read, isn't it?  Here's what it says along the side: "How could I stop after drawing the nose?  I just had to keep going.  This is Shawn, who let me draw him while he researched toaster ovens online.  Ours just gave up the ghost.  Our oven is on the fritz, too.  If the stovetop goes, we'll break down and order out!"  Up top it says: "(Doesn't he look a little like a king of Rohan here?  Pretty intense.)"

The Kitchen Sink

EDM Challenge #64  Draw your sink.  The sink itself isn't much to talk about.  It's a nice stainless steel sink that has been working fairly well for us.  However, it replaced another perfectly good sink and also took away much needed counter and cabinet space.  And this unnecessary kitchen renovation happened with about 10 hours of warning for us, at about 10:00 the night before.  And now, four months later, it's still not done.  And I will never get that cabinet space back and now I keep dishes in a cardboard box in the other room.  Do I sound bitter?  I shouldn't, I know.  We have running water and all sorts of luxuries.  I just need to remind myself of that whenever I start cursing the space.

This was done with watercolor and pen and ink.  I used a proper pen, with a nib and a bottle of ink.  It was fun!  Dip, draw, dip, draw.  I could see the rhythm of a calligrapher being quite calming.  Is it time to learn calligraphy?  I did find that my handwriting became much fancier with that pen in my hand.

Snowball in the new year

EDM Challenge #63  Go on a nature walk. Pick up items. Draw what you find.

Everything is snowy (finally! hooray!), and it gets dark early these days, so my nature walk result was a snowball on a white field at night.  My son threw his first snowball, too, which was fun for all!

Charcoal today.  It felt right for snow because of the texture that's automatically there on the paper.

Happy New Year!  Here's to more blogging, more drawing, and some wonderful things in the year to come.