nanke's stuff

I tagged this drawing a portrait, but only because it's a face.  While I do think it resembles Jackie Kennedy (some of you actually guessed correctly in a previous WIP post, much to my amazement!), it's far from a  finished polished drawing.  So, I'm calling it a drawing of a face instead.  I found I had been avoiding meeting up with her again.  I'm not sure why, but I have to admit, I'm relieved to be able to give her a spray of fixative and move on down the highway.

I'm not  sure what I want to do next.  My mind has been awhirl with thoughts of watercolor painting, mixed media, doing something with fabric that includes embroidery and applique .... I'm feeling sort of restless.  Then, to add to my angst, in a corner of the closet in my studio is a sweater I started knitting last year (or maybe even the year before).   It's in there grumbling and complaining, and the noise is getting louder.  One of these days I'm going to have to pay attention to it.  Actually, it's almost finished, but the the thing is, I got to a part where I'm not exactly sure how to proceed, and I find myself hoping the knitting fairy will deign to visit and beg me to let her finish it.  I'll be sure to let you know if that happens!

Well, as always, things have been very busy.  We had a great time in Nashville (our son graduated from college, we got to hang out with our 2 year old grandson, both of our sons were there with us, and only one of our DILs was missing due to an unavoidable out of town trip..... more on that later!).  The weather was waaaaay too hot for those of us who live in the mitten, but no matter - we just stayed inside all the time.  And, just to add frosting to the cake, our new graduate got a new job today!!!!   Not easy in this economy, and we're really excited for him and his family.

On another note, my friend, Vicki, and I went to Ann Arbor on Tuesday for a bit of "drawing in the wild".  It was a lot of fun, although I'm not thrilled with my output.  The weather cooperated, it's always fun to hang out with her, and we had a great lunch together.  I tried out my new water pens (I think that's what they're called - those tubes you fill with water and they have brushes on the ends).  I bought a set of 4 - 3 sizes of round brushes and 1 flat brush.  So, here is the piece I did with them.  I've missed blogging, so I'm glad to be back.

On another quick note - someone is using my email address to post on some of the art groups I belong to.  I think it's really a shabby thing to do, and I don't know if there's on darn thing I can do about it.  Whoever you are ..... shame on you!!  Use your own address to post your phony baloney things.  Enuf said!!!!


This is called, "The Talking Head" .... my model up and left me.  : ( so I just added the background.  I see that the chair seems to be floating .... perhaps I'll add a shadow or 2!

Is it just me, or are things really busy these days?  It's been way too long since I've posted to my blog, and I've missed it.  What have I been doing?  Hard to say, exactly.  Spending time with friends who needed a friend, volunteering at the county Health Dept (only 1 day a week, though), getting ready for a trip, cleaning, shopping, .....  I don't know where the time goes!  Anyhow, here I am, and I'm in the process of doing a pencil drawing of the same woman I did the dom/non-dom drawings of in ink.  This is a woman all of you would recognize from her photo, but certainly not from my ink drawings.  The pencil drawing (a WIP), is closer to what she really looks like, but since she's a WIP, she's still not there yet.... maybe she never will be ..... who knows? 

I don't know when I'll get to visit her again.  We'll be traveling soon, and even tho it's not a long trip, somehow it takes me  a long time pre and post trip to organize everything.   Abby (our wonderful dog) will have to go to "camp"  (the kennel, but we Never use that word around her), and then, of course, she'll have to be picked up.  The camp is not very close to our house, but they love her there and she's been there often enough that she's comfortable (at least that's what we prefer to think).  I have to say, tho, she has yet to bring home a gimp lanyard..... anyone besides me remember those?

Enough of the rambling .... here's the WIP:

It was suggested that I do a drawing with my left hand (dominant) to compare it with the one done with my right hand (non-dom),  so today I took a bit of time to do just that.  My brush marker is almost out of ink, so I did minimal work on her hair.  As a result it looks like she has a new hair style.  Actually what happened is that the humidity got so high (90% here), that her hair fell.   I can relate, and she has my full sympathy.  I may do a few more pairs of drawings, just for the fun of it.    There are different things I think work with each of them.  I thought about using pencil, but to make a better comparison, using ink again seemed like the way to go.

I do love using pencil, as you know, so maybe with the next set I'll do that.  Although, that could very well make me  crazy  crazier what with all the erasing, shading, changing, fretting and fussing.

OK, so all of the non-dominant  hand drawings have been pretty small so far.  In the world of large drawings, this one is also small, but it is quite a bit larger than the other ones I've done.   Even tho it doesn't look like the model I used, I'm pleased with the way it turned out.  The proportions are pretty accurate and it just works better than the other ones.  I anticipated that doing a drawing larger would be more difficult, but actually it wasn't any harder than the other ones were.

I did find that I had to turn the paper upside down to work on the right side of the drawing.  Also, I found it interesting to find that sometimes my hand was in the "left-handed" position while I drew ... that is sort of curved over the top of what I was doing, with my hand above where I was drawing.  Oddly, I don't do that with my left hand when drawing or writing, unlike many lefties.  (My sister, Maryanne  almost always wrote that way,  unless she had her hand in some sort of crab-like position under the line of writing and wrote backhand).   So, here is my "large" drawing ... 5.5" x 8.5", done with Micron pens and a Micron brush pen.

Today was beastly hot and humid ... finally it rained, which helped.  I was home in the morning, then off with a friend in the afternoon - thankfully everywhere I was had air conditioning (wimp that I am).  After dinner (homemade pizza which we have almost every Friday, being somewhat boring bears), I did 2 very quick sketches with my right hand.  Considering how long I spent on the 2 of them (maybe 6 or 7 minutes), I think they're not too bad.  But here's the thing.  Spending such a short time on them gives me the illusion of having an excuse for their not being being very good - pretty sly!  Except it's not working since I can see right through me.

One of these days soon I'll spend more time on doing just one to see what happens.  Until then, here's what I've got.

So I've been messing around with using my right hand (my non-dominant hand),  to do crossword puzzles for awhile now.  Some days are better than others in terms of the legibility of my printing, but I've been doing it long enough now that every once in awhile, I actually reach for a pen with my right hand instead of my left when I'm doing something other than a puzzle.  So today, after having been gone all day and not having much time for drawing, I decided to try drawing with my right hand.  I only had time for 2 drawings (about 25 minutes in all, including finding faces in a magazine to copy).  Also, I used my smaller sketch book (5.5" x 8.5") rather than one of my larger ones.   I used Micron pens, my favorite ink tools.   I've noticed that when I'm trying something I think will be hard, I tend to gravitate towards working small.  I have no idea why, but I sense it's an odd form of protectionism, if that makes any sense at all...... don't worry if it doesn't.

Anyhow, here they are.  The first on was really a bust - distorted, out of proportion, crooked ..... name a drawing flaw and you'll find it there.  Even the printing is really terrible.  The second one is much better, I think.  Not good mind you, but better.  And, even the printing is better.  I think I'll mess around with this a bit more.  It was kind of fun, and since it was my non-dom hand, I didn't feel pressured to do something really good.  It would just be what it would be!