Stuff on my desk

Canson multimedia sketchboog and cheapo set of paints

My desk is a mess - two laptops, one external monitor, keyboards, mice, tons of papers and the list goes on. I decided to put the mess to good use and immortalize some of it. I tried to pay attention to the process more - which shapes were wet at a given time, wait for the first layer to dry before applying the next.

Remains of the supper

The last few days .. ok make it the last couple of weeks ..things got busy and art fell throguh the cracks ...though I managed to draw the remains of my supper! 3 fries, half a bun and an empty paper cup. I used pen and watersoluble charcoal. I don't usually draw in ink for obvious reasons ...need to be able to delete mistakes. Occasionally though, drawing in ink becomes an exercise in accepting the bad and the ugly along with the ok stuff.

EDM #184

I only had time for few small trials. This is EDM #184 Draw a park bench. There weren't any where I was, so I drew a picnic table instead. I will have to teach myself GIMP so that I can enhance a bit these scans. One day, after I find a way squeeze 40 hours worth of to-do's into the 24 hours of a day.

Rhododendron EDM #66

This is a sketch I did from an online picture.

Draw a screw ...and a bird ...

...otherwise known as EDM #226 and EDM #125.
The screw - pencil on baby moleskine. The face and the bird - Carandache Neocolor, watersolluble graphite on altered book pages. This was an exercise from Pam Carriker's workshop "Shades of grey". The workshop was a lot of fun and helped me start using the brush pen. However, doodling does not come as easy as I thought. I am mostly doing the same things over and over again. I guess I have to practice letting go ...

Strawberry fields

EDM Challange # 24 - draw a piece of fruit.
I chose strawberries. They look like a cross between berries and apples I suppose. The three ones are pencil on baby moleskine (the baby pages bleed if I use ink). The other ones are ment as an abstract study. I bought Laura Reiter's book Learn to paint abstracts. One of the chapters talks about how to take a real object and transform in an abstract painting. I suspect the strawberry may show up in the mear future in a different incarnation ...

Draw a lamp

This is the lamp in my room at the Homeplace ranch. These sketches are in my hand made notebook. I took different papers (watercolor, St. Armand papers, found papers, cardboard) and had them bound with a spiral bound. I like to have differnt textures and colors as background. If my drawings aren't great at least the background has some color :) EDM #2

Two-for-one

On the way to Calgary, I had breakfast at the airport. I had to be there at 6am so I decided to grab a coffee and a sandwich at Moe's. This is a quick sketch of the glass of water and the sandwich. This way I killed two birds with one stone: EDM #162 and EDM #25. Plus, no way I will ever draw my breakfast again. I cannot even open my eyes before breakfast let alone draw it. I also drew a bedouin from a a picture in the newspaper/ I liked more in black and white and I did not pay attention to the pen which turned out to not be water proof. So the ink smudged and I messed up his lips ...

Draw a button

I guess this one qualifies as a 2-in-1 - it a metallic button (#89 and #32). I have hard time shading in pencil and adding reflections on a metal piece is even harder. I am having hard time with the shades of gray in life in general too!

I am glad the week is over and I am looking forward to a quiet weekend doing more painting.

Draw a book

I drew one of the books I bought during my last shopping therapy session. I keep "running into" Rilke for a while now. It seems that almost everything I read mentions him. So when I saw the books lined up pretty on the shelf, I could not resist. I had however to refrain myself from I buying all 4 of them!



A while back I drew the cover of a magazine and the watercolor pencil box:

...and the blog is risen!

I decided to give it another try. It was more difficult than I thought to keep up to date with the posts, and that for various reasons (life got in the way, most of my sketches are too bad to be posted and so forth). Last week I enrolled in two online classes and I am painting something every day almost, trying different things. My sketching is alive and well, halas not as good as I would like it to be. So I have accumulated some content to post here. But the decisive factor was that the EDM superblog now accepts new blogs. So my plan is to join EDM on facebook and superblog. It is scary because my drawings are not as good as those I see on EDM...

This is EDM Challange #4 Draw a cup:

Daily sketches #4,#5,#6

I drew the running show with the left hand - watercolor paper, pencil.
The chair was schetched on a train ride downtown.

Daily Sketches #3, #4

It took me so long to upload those 2 drawings that I almost gave up ... I could have made 2 more sketches instead. Surely I must be making a mistake. There has to be an easier way ...

2009 ...

.. is here... already.

I recently discovered Danny Gregory’s work. Amazing. I am not a big fan of the New Year’s resolutions, but I decided to try sketching every day for the month of January. Then I will decide if I continue or not.
My drawing skills are not great. What I see on Danny’s site and on the EDM blog is intimidating. I am hoping to keep life happenings alive. When December comes and I look back, the year is full of “black holes” – days and weeks that I do not recall. Like I was asleep for ¾ of the year. Of my life. I am hoping to change that. Here are the first two sketches: