Weird

According to my daughter, I am weird. Why else would I be sketching my blender? For the Sketchbook Challenge of course - the January theme is "Highly Prized". There are so many things I highly prize - my family, my faith, my health ... the list goes on. However, I love my Vitamix blender - I use it 3 or more times in a day - it sits on my kitchen bench at the ready. I make my green smoothie every morning in my blender using whatever fruits are in season plus some greens such as spinach and kale. A wonderful way to start the day. I make my almond milk in the blender, salad dressings, my chocolate nut bread (see previous post), soup, etc. It makes short work of anything I throw into it. With my raw diet, there is no way I could manage without it - so here she is - my highly prized kitchen appliance!

Great news - I managed to salvage my painting for One World One Heart blog giveaway (starting on Monday!). I will give her a couple of days to dry then spray her with fixative so no other accidents will affect her. Onto my next project now - stay tuned.

Cosmos

The Creative Every Day 2011 challenge for the month of January 2011 is "Cosmos". I guess most people would think of cosmos as being what is out in space but being the gardening lover that I am, I immediately thought of the flowers cosmos. I love cosmos, their beautiful ferny foliage and their vibrant colours. I must plant some soon. I was unsuccessful with my last planting, the soil here is very poor and rocky and dries out very quickly on a 44C day!

My sketch of cosmos was done using Derwent Inktense pencils and a Pitt artist pen. Now onto completing the painting of the walls of our bedroom, making the most of the public holiday before returning to work tomorrow. Have a great day everyone.

Sketching and Productivity

Hi everyone,

Although I haven't posted anything on my blog for a few days, I haven't been slacking. Why is it that all the fruit trees ripen at the same time? I have been madly drying apricots and bottling (canning) them. The plums are ready too, so on my next day off I will be making plum jam and plum sauce. The peaches are just about ready so on the weekend and early next week I will be doing more canning. The nectarines are ripening in batches thank goodness!

I did a few sketches a week ago that I haven't got around to posting. So here they are now.



I have started my Misty Mawn on line Drawing and Painting Portraits workshop. My first lesson is about pencil drawing and our first assignment was to draw a ball or egg. Here it is:



The second assignment in the lesson is to fill a page with faces, trying to make them have different expressions - well I filled the page, don't know about the expressions. I found it very difficult to draw that small - my eyesight isn't that good. We also have to draw some faces but I don't have all the items I need yet - am awaiting a stick eraser and some blending stumps - I really can't do much without them - my finger (my usual blending tool) is too big. Can you believe we don't have stick erasers in Australia - or if we do, I haven't been able to track one down. With a stick eraser you can get into very small areas to erase, such as the eyelids and pupils - something you simply can't achieve with a regular eraser. Can't wait for these to arrive so I can get on with my sketching.

Comments have been made about painting the sketches - yes I intend to get back into that too - just warming up at the moment ;)

Yearning

I was too busy last night watching episodes of "Chuck" to do a sketch but I did one the night before which I share with you. She has this look in her eyes and I was trying to put a name to it when I came up with "yearning". I don't know what she is yearning for; maybe I'll have to think on that one.

We have a hot week here - most days in the high 30 celcius bracket - thank goodness for effective air conditioning.

Bushy Eyebrows

At 10.30pm yesterday, I was trying to unwind, doing a little sketching of this girl. The children come into my bedroom to see what I'm up to, bouncing up and down on the bed oblivious to the fact that it makes it a little more difficult to sketch when the paper has momentum. "Her eyes look funny", "It's not a her, it's a boy - look at the eybrows", "are you going to leave her lips like that?". Hmmmm, I patiently finished the drawing and sent them packing off to bed. Oh the joys.

Tonight, my muscles ache. After over a week of not carting a baby around for most of the day, my muscles went into meltdown. It was lovely to be with them today - my repertoire of songs and fingerplays included: "We wash our dirty hands", "1 2 3 4 5 once I caught a fish alive", "Here is the beehive", "Twinkle Twinkle little star", "Baa baa black sheep" and "Galumph went the little green frog" to mention a few. I love my babies.

Quick sketch

I have had the week off work between Christmas and New Year and what a productive week it has been! I need to go back to work for a rest - just joking. I cleaned out and reorganised the storage room in my studio - I couldn't even walk into it, now it is streamlined with shelves and I know where everything is! Wow - I have already saved myself so much time not having to look far to find things. It was a huge job and took a couple of days but it was soooo worth it. I also sewed drapes for my studio, repurposing some old lounge drapes, cutting them down to size and adding some contrast fabric on the bottom of them - they look great.

I also used my solar oven for the first time. It arrived the week before Christmas and one of my goals for my week off work was to give it a go. I cooked a chocolate cake in it and our evening meal - all turning out delicious and not a cent of electricity used in the process. Very satisfying and yummy to boot.

I repaired a doll, replaced elastic in two dress-up skirts, made a heap of texture cards for my babies at work and a tablecloth.

I spent a day at work too, getting all the resources organised, hanging a curtain rod and curtains and mobiles. It feels so good to know that when I go back to work tomorrow everything has a place and is readily accessible. Yay!

Of course, there were some jobs that I didn't quite get to - but all the things I really wanted to do have been done and there will always be jobs on the list of things to do.

I digress from the title of this blog post - last night before I went to sleep I did a quick portrait pencil sketch - it was pretty dark in my room but I'm quite pleased with the way she turned out - maybe I should draw in a darkened room more often.

Have a great week!