also in the sketchbook...

Truly a sketchbook page: I don't know if I want to seperate this permanently. At first I just wanted to do the crow in a 4x4 and be done with it. But the more I looked at it the more I thought this would be a good compostition as a whole.

On the crow theme, there are notes on the left side of the page. This is either going to be the Crow for Sting or the pun.... or maybe it will be more. I found this crow shape in a photograph and, true to art you have to make it your own.... the birds beak and some of the wing feathers are nibs of a fountain pen. But what am I going to do with it now? I have had a few ideas but nothing really solid and concrete.

As a growth exercise, I learned a lot about patience when dealing with this medium. And a lot about how the brushes need to work to make textures. While everything was still wet the crow looked horrible. It worried me. Once it dried it looked great.

From the Sketchbook of...

Inspired by my own projects with www.moo.com I started working on some more watercolors. They turned out way better than previous experience told me they would. So I have been living with my sketchbook at my side 24/7.

I liked the way that the cacao pod photographed. And that is the color scheme I wanted to stick with. For the last year or so I've been thinking that I need to change up the motif. But really, to keep it fresh all I needed to do was change up the colors. I've been in the orange, red, yellow with a hint o green for years. So now I'm into the Summer colors with lots of blue and green balancing the reds.

The only thing with this sketch is the vase. The structure is totally off. Can you say "outta practice"? Boy I can. Still... I like how vibrant this is. And I am really happy with the technique. It is a lot less controlled than the way that I usually do watercolor. I think this means that I an loosening up.

A Crow for Sting

I got up today thinking that I had to work because I always work on Wednesday. And I was a good little cog in the machine and covered shifts in an emergency so I thought that I would still work with a few hours of over time as my reward. Imagine my surprise when I got to work and found out that I wasn't supposed to be there. Not unusual for things to change and people not tell me. I am after all I am a good little cog in a not so vast corporate machine. But still...

Not complaining at all. I like surprises like that. It's just that rather than work til I hit my 40 the big cogs and the control arms decided to short me 6 hours on my schedule. Now the upside is that my " further any big picture" paycheck is only short 3 hours since I did get paid for 3 hours of overtime last week. So in the grand scheme I am not really too far behind in earnings. And I do have a day for me and my projects that no one knows about. Which means no one can commandeer my free time with demands of their own. And it feels like rain.

It has been so incredibly hot that this cool 68 degree morning feels like a breathe of Heaven. It is the perfect day for painting watercolors at my favorite cafe table with a small collection of my favorite Schlagerkunstlern (German pop music artists). And it is the perfect day for working on the motif that has been in my head before the real fall weather gets here.

Crows.
Not just any old run of the mill "Nevermore" spouting crows or counting crows. But the whimsical "make it your own" stuff that I am leaning to these days. A crow with a pun... ya know cause it bugs the Jeebus out of Old Uncle Willie*. A crow with that "gypsy soothe-sayer familiar" kind of familiarity that may or may not end up wearing a Mr. Clean ear piercing. A crow with uncharacteristic "Don't shoot the messenger" contrition. And a crow for Sting.

So since I skipped all sorts of headaches in learning figure drawing I had to find reference material. And I did. Oodles and oodles of reference material. And I accidentally found the blog most recently added to the list: junipurr. Please go have a look. This is a spectacular print making blog. And I wonder why this person is not designing rubber stamps. I would love to have some of her work to create with. But that is for another post.

So I have decided that the crow theme either means I am looking forward to Fall or feeling murderous... I think I will let the augury tell me which.