nanke's stuff

I'm back from Nashville and I'm feeling great!  I got a tad hammered by the pollen when I got there and so was a bit under the weather, but all is well now and I'm getting back in the saddle again.  I had a great time playing with our soon-to-be-3 grandson.  He's so much fun and gets more interesting every day.  Our new baby is just the best!  He's good-natured,  happy,  and becomes more and more engaged with the world every day.  What pure joy grandchildren are.

I did this sketch of the baby after I got home.  I find children (especially babies) very difficult to do.   I'm not really sure why they present such a challenge to me, but there you are.   That said, it's so entertaining to just watch their little faces as they assume every possible  human expression in the course of just a few minutes.  It's as though they're practicing doing them without the slightest idea of which face goes with which emotion.   I could watch for hours!  This drawing was done from a photo I took while holding him on my lap.  We stared at each other intently, and I can't help but wonder what he was thinking as we looked into each other's eyes.  I know what I was thinking .... "I love you to pieces my dear, sweet, little Oliver" .......

I can't call this finished because it isn't.  There are too many things about it that disturb me.  However, it is over.  I'm tired of fiddling with it, so I'm moving on down the highway.  The question, of course, is which highway?  Yes, I know this was supposed to be the prelude to a watercolor.  The paper is sitting on my drawing table with tape around the edges as a sort of frame.  The tubes of paint are on the table, too, but not the brushes.  Hmmm - a Freudian slip in neglecting to get out the brushes? 

I did do a quick pencil sketch on the paper .... and by quick, I mean I spent about 2 minutes on it.  Now in the past when I've done watercolors, I've spent a great deal of time on the sketches - both the value sketches as well as the finished sketch on the watercolor paper.  I think my approach to this one is indicative of how I feel about starting it.  OK, I'm getting entirely too self-analytical and I'm feeling a bit silly about it all.  So, without anymore comments, here's the colored pencil drawing.

In doing a wee bit of wall decor rearranging, I took down this drawing I did awhile ago and replaced it with a much larger watercolor. It's been hanging above the mantle since before Christmas, and I just didn't see it anymore - it just blended in with everything else. When I took it down I took a good, long look at it again, and thought about all the things I love about drawing with ink.

When I draw with ink, I tend to go a bit slower than I do with pencil. I think it's because the ink is so permanent - no erasing it. Once it's down, it's down. With drawings like this one, I quickly get lost in it. The pen almost seems to go where ever it wants, and I'm just there to observe. I love all the little details the .oo5 Micron pen can make (my favorite sizes of Micro are .005, .01, and .02). Teensy little dots, squiggles, and lines seem to magically appear on the paper right before my eyes, and as images emerge I'm both mesmerized and amazed. I love the clean lines and the versatility of ink - things can be light and airy or really dark and heavy. And, I love that I can use color or not - the drawings can stand on their own.

This drawing is called, "An Unexpected Turn of Events", and hung in the Power Center Auditorium in Ann Arbor for several weeks.

Not too long ago I got a couple of new pencils. They are called, "Sketch & Wash", and they are water-soluble graphite pencils. Now I was really intrigued when I heard about them and thought it would be great fun to try them. So yesterday while the rice was cooking, I sat down with a Vanity Fair magazine and did a sketch using one of the photographs as a model. Here's what I learned. They seem like a regular, fairly soft, pencil and can be blended with your finger (or a stump or chamois, etc) just like a good old-fashioned pencil. By adding water (I used a brush, but you could use your finger or a cloth) the color gets a lot darker than when it's dry. I wanted to remove some of it, but found once it was wet I couldn't easily do it. I definitely need more practice with them, but all in all, I think I'll really like using them. I like the way the water helps the color blend and soften. I'll noodle around with them some more and see if I can get a bit better!