Virtual Sketchcrawl #10 - food prep or aftermath

I'm not cooking ahead for Thanksgiving, but I did have some parsnips and a carrot that needed to get eaten up.  So I decided to roast them.  I laid them out (artistically) and did a quick sketch while cooking some bacon in the preheating oven.

And then, while those were roasting, I opened and cleaned an acorn squash, to bake for later.

Virtual Sketchcrawl #9 - Nature preparing for winter

I walked up the street this morning to see if the cedar waxwings were still busily stuffing themselves on my neighbor's crabapple trees.  But no, they'd pretty much stripped the trees and moved on to greener pastures.  So I resorted to looking for tinges of fall color in the trees I can see from my backyard.  

And then, I sketched the tinges of orange creeping into my persimmons in the front yard.

Virtual Sketchcrawl - sketching in a grid.

 

Back in the spring, I sketched the view out my bedroom window, newly replanted after the oak disaster this winter.  I salvaged some chunks of the pine trunks to set up a seating area, thinking it would a good place to sit and have tea on summer afternoons.

But it turned out to be Aramis' most favorite spot in the yard, and he demand to go out to visit it several times each day.  I'd sit and read, while he lounged, basking his old bones in the the sun.  I transplanted one of his catmint plants there to make it smell good for him, and planted some oat grass to give him something to nibble on.

Sadly, I lost him in August, and buried him under his catmint.  He'd lived with me for over 21 years and was an extraordinary cat, so I've got no complaints.  But I do miss him.

Virtual Sketchcrawl

Today, I decided to sketch on a a grid of colored backgrounds. (I was inspired by Virginia Hein's sketches this week.) I thought I'd do thumbnails, but that's not quite what happened. Lately, I've been sketching a lot of botanicals, but today I stayed in the same room and tried to draw different things that I saw from that contained space. I listened to 'Wait, Wait...Don't Tell Me' to try to fill in for some of the social aspect that I miss with our virtual sketch crawls. It's not the same, but there were a few laughs. Thanks for another fun challenge.

Virtual sketchcrawl - Embody the art you love

Today's challenge was to be inspired by and emulate some piece of artwork that you love.  I'd picked Hokusai's Great Wave.  



I used a limited palette and no blending to try to emulate a woodblock print, portraying a few leaves of the shrub beside my front porch.

Construction

I thought that I should document all the construction that going on within sight of my house.  Cause someday, God willing, it'll all be done and quiet on the street again.



The green dumpster is for my next door neighbor.  The structural work is all done now, and the electrical system and plumbing have been repaired.  They still have to re-assemble her kitchen, and repair the plaster and repaint in of the rest of the house.

The brown dumpster is for the triplex across the street, which has been vacant for years.  The original plan was to turn it into a five-story building containing three luxury condominiums.  That, thankfully, was scrapped.  It's either going to come back to life as a modest triplex, or have the apartments merged to become a single-family house.

And behind that, where the alternator rebuild shop used to be, a new condo building is going up. 

Virtual sketchcrawl - new media

I'd bought a cheap kid's set of watercolor pencils, months ago, at Freddy's, but had never tried them.  So, with today's theme of trying a different media than you usually use, I dragged them out.


Obviously, I couldn't sketch the pencils themselves, not in their true colors at least, so I let other pencils stand in.  And the highlights didn't work very well.  There was a white pencil in the box, but, wet or dry, it didn't seem to end up in the drawing.

For my second sketch, I dragged everything outside, and huddled under my eaves to do one of the dogwood blossoms.  To make the white stand out, I cut apart one of the multitude of paper grocery sacks that I've brought home during the pandemic.

And, again, the white was pretty pathetic.

Continuous line

OK, I tried a continuous line drawing. Actually, I tried it twice, and then reverted to standard (virtual) brush strokes.

And I decided to document activities that I used to do often, but have let slip of late, and have now taken up again during the pandemic.

Firstly, sewing.  Specifically, sewing face-masks.

I found the continuous line business difficult to do on a tablet, because I couldn't zoom in.  Which meant that I couldn't see exactly where the line was going down under my finger.

But I tried it again to show that I've started baking bread again.

This one was difficult too, because that bread was right out of the oven and just smelled so good. So, as soon as the sketch was finished, I cut it open to eat a quarter of it.  And then another quarter, with butter.