Everyday in October

I tried to do Inktober but haven't been able to keep up especially with this cough and cold. But here are some drawings that I did in my Stillman & Birn Gamma sketchbook.

This is the prop from the Bombardier Q400 plane that we flew in with Porter airlines!  I actually drew it on the 8th but have never posted it anywhere.  I used my grand-daughters Crayola marker for the yellow.

this acorn was sittin on my daughters kitchen table so I drew it! 

Fork in the Road

Sat in a "no parking zone" to draw this at the "Five Points" in downtown Barrie, Ontario.  The restaurant in the centre is the closest thing that Barrie has to a "flat iron" building. 

It was quite the challenge and I can see that I have been "somewhat" successful.  at least I was able to complete it, paint and all before I left for home. 

A House and a Panama Hat - kind of...

I went by this house at 158 Dunlop St E in Barrie and saw that the legal eagle firm has vacated the premises and the huge mansion of a house appears to be abandoned.  I have always loved this house when I drive by.  I stopped a year a go or so and attempted to draw it but was not successful.  So happy that I made the effort today.  Funny how people alway feel that they need to comment when they see someone drawing.  A fella went by walking his dog and he said, "Drawing the house, eh?"  Yes! Yes, I am!

Earlier this summer we were in the big city -Toronto Canada - to take a tour of Graffitti Alley just off Queen St West. It was the hottest day that we had up to that moment. We walked by this store and decided that we needed hats to survive the tour. My hubby bought this Panama hat and we were told that the way to tell a Panama from other hats is the woven circle in the centre.  I couldn't figure out how to draw the texture so I just drew. It is actually white and I didn't want to leave it as a contour drawing. Now it makes me think of a computer simulation during the graphics stage of hat building. 

A Flaming Meditation

EDiS #6- here is my matchstick flame. We are still in the big city visiting family and since my grand-daughter has gone to her piano lesson I have a few minutes to post and surf here! Way, way back in the day, I belonged to a transcendental meditation group.  We were taught to use the time of a burning flame to wipe our minds clean of "stuff" and concentrate on meditating. At first, I could only last for that very short period of time before my mind would wander. I had fun.... the second time ever drawing my hand and the first for a flame! I had to jimmy around trying to make skin tone, need to practice that one more. In my Moley

Sketchbook. 

Moorish mask

Funny how I see this souvenir everyday but I don't really look at it. I took down this leather mask we brought back from Portugal.  It was quite challenging to get all of the folds in the leather to create the face.  We had a good holiday but if I was to do it over again we would have spent the money on the excursions.  We missed a great opportunity to visit Morocco.

Watercolour first then add drawing

A new technique that I think I enjoy doing very much is to lay down the watercolour and then apply the pen work afterwards.

This is how I did this sketch of this Canada Goose in my Moleskine sketchbook. My initial paint application has created a shadow that makes this goose appear to be in motion. 

Hot tomatoes! Too hot to handle!

I forgot to post this one.

Trying to do more art!

Every Day in August #22-Still Life. What I have been doing for weeks!! This one was a challenge for me, I am never comfortable about the placement of my subject matter. This is what I did today creatively and literally for weeks now.  Okay... so the rusty shears were just a prop in place of the new pruning shears I have been using!!! Faber-Castell pen and watercolour in a new Moley sketchbook. It isn't a watercolour one because I prefer the portrait orientation but it does seem to take the watercolour better than before.....but that might be in my imagination! 

I love gadgets even when they aren't mine!

I don't know if I am alone in this or not but my hubby and I have separate tool boxes.  I keep mine on the main floor for easy access. Today was the first time that I have ever seen this gizmo in action, he brought out because he saw me struggling. Like my purse his toolbox is his personal domain and that is fine with me. I certainly appreciated the assistance of this gadget though. So am I the only one here who didn't know what this handy dandy tool was for?!??!

I love Sketchbook Art

I love that I can take my sketchbook wherever I go. When I have it and a pen I can keep from being bored or lonely. 

I did this while eating at a Montana's Restaurant in Oakville. Thank goodness I had this to do as the table I was offered was the worst one in the whole restaurant. 

After the storm!

We are still cleaning up from the major storm that blew through our place on Sunday August the 2nd. Four loads of brush to the dump already.

Took some time out to go to town and saw this 1969 Rolls Royce Silver Shadow for sale along the road. These are rare in these parts so I pulled over. The man who lives there came out to see what I was up to and had no problem with letting me park my car in his lane way for this drawing. Only bummer was the car is white; I'm not a fan of white! My hubby wanted to know the asking price and had to tell him, I just wanted to draw it not buy it!!

Wonky selfies

This is so very fun to do! You should try it. I used an app that distorted my face!

I would never have thought of this if it not been for SketchbookSkool dot com 

Visiting family

Meet Maxine (or Max for short) the cheetah! My little grand-daughters newest addition to her stuffed animal menagerie.

Trying out this new sketchbook by Cottonwood Arts. I thought I might not like it as the paper is super smooth. However, as it turns out I like how the watercolour floats on the paper! 

My grand-daughter wasn't so sure that she liked the green paint even though that is the colour of her living room walls. 

This is the drawing I did for The Daisy Yellow Index card a Day! It is my grand-daughters baseball cap. When you are born and raised in Toronto, of course you have a Blue Jays cap even if you are only 3 years old! 

My entry in Kristen's sketchbook

I am still taking on-line classes with Sketchbook Skool dot com and enjoying every minute! I joined a sketchbook exchange with some other students and this is the final entry in Kristen's book. I will be mailing it out to her today! Yippee! What fun!

Another first -first ever hair colour high lights

What was I afraid of?? However, I was glad that I went to the sister of a good friend of mine. I knew that she would do right by me. I'm doing what most gaur dressers don't want you to do and that is allow my grey hair to grow in gracefully. I just hate dying it so often. The new shiny grey hair growth is do obvious to me and I would zero in on them when I would look at myself in the mirror!


Rene has a pretty cool set up in her basement! I love her colour palette - I mean who doesn't like purple and grey!

I received this brand span king new pen in the mail yesterday. I drew it before I had even loaded it with the converter and ink. I have since done a quick test drive and I love it!


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Ouch!

I had someone back into me from a parking spot while I was in the driving lane at a shopping plaza. I went to get the appraisal for the body work yesterday. Thankfully I am not at fault! Who knew that this minimal damage would be assessed at $4,037.00 CDN What truly irritates me was her blasé attitude since she was driving a fleet vehicle and had there been much damage to her she would simply get a new car to drive. Me....I got to be without my dear Bertha for 2 weeks!!! I stood out in the -24C wind chill for the ink work after I got home from town and rushed inside to warm up! Applied watercolour today.


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Missing the Sun and Sand of St Lucia

I am so proud of myself for actually documenting my holiday in my sketchbook! I wanted to do it and I accomplished my goal!

Here is a page I started and completed while we were laying on the beach on our last day!





I never think of taking a snap of the room-a hotel room is just a hotel room to me but.... I found that drawing and painting it so very different!


I really love these strange flowers - Birds of Paradise! I drew and painted it in the open air lobby at Smugglers Cove Resort, St Lucia. I had some of the employees at the resort come by to have a look and they were nice enough to make positive comments.


I'm getting a little more confident about making art in public. I just have to remind myself that this is my sketchbook and there is no intention that it be "fine art"! I simply want to document my life!

I'm so happy that I signed up for an on-line art class at Sketchbook Skool. Check it out, the course is definitely worth the money!

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I'm a "Sketchbook Skool" student!

I am so happy to be taking part in "Sketchbook Skool" co-founded by Danny Gregory!  I have one of his books and had glanced through it many times but had never actually had done anything about it.  I simply admired the drawings and wished that I could too.  The only way to become a better artist is to actually make art and working in a sketchbook is a "safe" way to do that.  It is my book and I can choose who sees what is inside.

 I am trying to work in my sketchbook more than once a week.  In fact, I have been exceptionally good for me that is....I started my Moleskine sketchbook on October 23, 2012.  Yup, and I only had a few pages with anything on it other than a few pages with fruit and veggies stickers.

I have signed up for Sketchbook Skool Semester 2 so that I will continue to try and complete this sketchbook and buy a proper watercolour one and yes complete it.  I love the concept of an illustrated journal so that there are some cool creative pages that my grand-daughter can look at and read.  She can read about "who" I am as a person and not just as a grandmother!

I think that is important...knowing more about a person that what they represent on the outside.  I never knew my grandmother; mostly due to the fact that we lived out of the country and out of the province for most of my live prior to her death.  I do have some fond memories of her but not really all that many.

I am hoping that I will create some different memories between Anju and myself.  I am hoping that she can become an "illustrated journal" type of gal as well when she gets older.

So here is one picture that I did as homework for Jane LaFazio's class.

At first I wasn't all that happy with the results but I got positive feedback from my fellow students. So, I am happy enough when I consider that I am a beginner!



Then I had a very bad thing happen; I lost my camera off the trunk of my car.  I drove all the way to Orillia before I realized that my camera was missing.  I drove back home right then and there and it was gone.  I had hoped that it had fallen off in our lane way but that didn't happen.

 So, I was pretty bummed out for a day and I stayed home to work on the "The Taste of Red" as my homework when there was a knock on the side door.  It was my next door neighbour; he lives on the farm in the house just north of us.  He had my camera bag in his hand!  It is a bit banged up but everything works!  I am so thrilled that his daughter figured that it was my camera.  I do have my name and address on a piece of cardboard in the bag so really it should have been fairly easy.  Regardless, I am so happy that I don't need to go out and spend lots of money on replacing it.  I guess I have better karma than what I thought or maybe I do have the luck of the Irish.

To celebrate our reunion I did this sketch of my camera.  It is a bit wonky but it is the first time that I have ever drawn a camera.  I need practice, practice, practice!!  However, I am still happy that I just dove in an actually completed another page in my book.

Do You Have a Blog?

I was asked via e-mail by a friend from Australia if I had a blog.  I have replied to her e-mail but I didn't mention this blog.  Okay so I do have a blog but seemingly I am not a blogger with any sort of stamina.  I find Instagram, Flickr and Facebook quick and easy (well that is a bit of a fib).  However, I can surf through these platforms on my phone; it isn't so easy posting to blogger using a hand-held device.  So, I just kind of got out of the habit.

Anyway, this post is for you Carol!  I just participated in a postcard swap with Hanna Andersson from and we were to post our blog addresses.  Felt a bit weird submitting my blog address after I checked some of the blogs of the swappers that sent me cards - they are avid bloggers.  As I have said, me…not so much.

It seems strange but I retired from work in May of this year and I should have loads of time to put into this blog.  Not true!  It is a conscious decision on my part to not blog really.  I tell everyone that I am as busy as I have always been and finding the time to blog just doesn't make it to the horizon.

So, I have been doing some different artistic endeavours and I think that I will pick up the gauntlet and give this thing another whirl.

I took an on-line experimental art course (if I could figure out how to put her badge/icon/thingie here I would but I don't find blogger easy) that I thoroughly enjoyed.  She is a fab artist from the UK and her name is Amelia Critchlow.  I now have a cool new mixed media avatar that I can use.

This is the first pencil selfie I have ever done and I enjoyed the process.  I especially like the hair although this was not required for that segment of the course.  I love the colour purple and so just started cutting shapes from a magazine.  Although I don't have purple hair, I added the grey shapes to indicate that I do have them.  I like the effect.  It is more representative of what my messy curly hair looks like in real life so I much prefer this to a Bitstrips cartoon!  I added some Derwent Inktense to cheeks and lips to add a bit more colour.

Try, try, try again!

I remembered the old adage so I thought I would take heart and try it on for size.

I wasn't happy with the way my last pencil drawing looked so I spent a little bit of time last night attempting to clean it up with the end result of improving the drawing.  I dragged out my pencil box that my hubby bought for me many years ago and grabbed the 6B.  On my way to work night shift last night, I picked up a package of Primacolor Ebony pencils as well.  I have used those two new pencils to darken up my drawing.  Using constructive criticism, I think these modifications are certainly a move in the right direction, especially the shadow cast.  At least now they actually look like a shadow and not part of the cutlery.  

I see one glaring mistake now that I have it on my screen before me (that is the beauty of technology and iPhoto).  However, I can still fix that without any problem.  This is a good start but I still think that it needs some more work, somehow I think that it is not dark enough yet.  It is just does not look "metal" enough for me.  Having said that, I will give this drawing a final spray and put it away for now.  It will be alright if I move on and try my hand at another drawing of something metal. 

That is it for today as I am trying to get all the bits and bobs together in preparation for putting them together to make ten mixed media postcards!  I will be getting my mailing list by January 27th so I would have liked to have many of the cards made by now but I just haven't had the time.  I am working overtime tomorrow and then the next day my hubby and I are heading south to the big city to see our grandchild.  It has been a week and a half since we have seen her and I expect she will have changed much already.  I miss her!