Nuki's not talking to me

Clearly my little inukshuk character Nuki is peeved with me. I've been neglecting him for months now, giving all my attention to new classes and ideas. Now that the holidays are approaching I've sat down and sketched out some ideas for this year's xmas cards. I have a few, one or two I really like so you would think all systems would be go to paint them. You would be wrong.

Instead, this is what shows up on my paper.  Inspired by the graphic on an Avoca HandweaversTM coffee mug - a sheep that I've dressed, not in one of their fabrics but in the family tartan of a dear friend. She's been calling to me to paint her ever since Kate brought the mug home a few weeks ago, so I'm hoping that now that I've done her, I can get into Nuki mode. Otherwise I'm slapping a xmas bow on her!

SBS Seeing Week 1

Fast and Slow exercise

One of this week's assignments is to first draw quickly, with a wet medium, the basic silhouette of an object. In my case it was a teal plastic sprayer bottle that I use to wet my palette box paints. This should be done in roughly one minute.

Then, using pen draw a much more detailed sketch over top of the first one. The hardest part for me was ignoring the painted undersketch in order to get the correct perspective for the ink sketch. I kept wanting to incorporate the painted bits LOL.

It was a lot of fun to do and I'll definitely try it again but I think the thing that surprised me the most was how recognizable the undersketch was considering it was pretty much just dashed off. Not bad for someone who has a hard time forgoing erasable pencil lines and working directly in pen. Drawing with paint is just madness I say LOL.

Now I have to finish the other part of this week's assignment which is to draw a piece of toast; a very detailed drawing of all the nooks and crannies.  Being wheat free for well over a year, obtaining the toast was the first challenge. Thanks Nan! Will post when it's completed...

Consider this as 'toast in two parts'! The basic outline and left hand side of the toast were done while doing the 'deep diving into the drawing'. Goal achieved. Then along came Cous, my carb obsessed Abyssinian.  I was so focused on my toast road map, which again was the whole point of the exercise, that he managed twice to grab it and run off with it, the little beggar. Found himself in timeout after that!

But I can see that my concentration was broken as I started in again, this time from the right hand side of the toast. Sigh. I've lost my enthusiasm for the task as well so I'm stopping here. Besides, week 2's lesson is already in my inbox and I'm ready to move on.

Autumn Goodies

We waited to celebrate Canadian Thanksgiving until this weekend when the whole family could be together.

Since Nan was making her always delicious roasted stuffed pork, Kate decided to complement this with applesauce made from scratch.  This turned out so tasty that it just had to be presented in a nicely shaped jar. And what is a jar without a pretty label.

Done with watercolour pencil on 20 lb plain white paper, hence the ripples in the scanned picture LOL.

Online Courses

"Fungi"   8in x 3in watercolour on Arches 140 lb CP paper

I so enjoyed the 'Beginnings' course from Sketchbook Skool that I have not only signed up for the second one called 'Seeing,' but I found another online course called Sketching Now -Foundations being taught by Liz Steele. I came across Liz' blog on my own  one day when I was wandering through the art blog corner of the internet a couple of months back.

Funny how things go though - she is also one of the instructors for Seeing. Liz was an architect in her previous life and it was her building sketches that drew me to her work. Plus she's a teacup afficionado and I like that quirkiness factor about her.

Seeing starts a week today and will overlap for a week or two with Foundations but that's okay. It's to be a slower paced, 12 week course with one week building on the next, that should take me through to the end of January by which time I imagine the next semester of SS will be up and running. And winter will be over before you know it!

See, this is my master plan to get through my least favourite season as quickly as possible.