Crow

My last painting of 2017. Wonder what the new year will bring?

Hairless Cat

Inktober is over, boo!, but I feel like I’m just getting started with ink. As with watercolor, there’s a bit of a flying by the seat of your pants feel to it. Once that mark is down, there’s no going back, but I love a challenge. 

The Fly

Inktober Challenge, Day 29, 11th Drawing. Halloween is a perfect excuse to draw something creepy!

Sweet Somethings

Inktober Challenge, Day 28, 10th Drawing. My new Strathmore toned mixed media paper arrived today, along with a new white gel pen. Love my new toys!

Mugwump

Inktober Challenge, Day 23. Spent a little more time on this sketch/painting of Billie.

Turning

Inktober Challenge, Day 17. A secondary challenge I set for myself today was to stay away from local color and play with tone. Had to sneak a little color in at the end tho.

All the Leaves Are (Not) Brown

Inktober Challenge, Day 14.

Another leaf that I found yesterday. Although it's a little the worse for wear today, it is still beautiful to me.

Fall

Inktober Challenge, Day 13. The neighbors must have thought I was nuts, sorting through their leaves for the "perfect" one, but I found it! :)

Baby of the Family

Inktober Challenge, Day 12. Our little Billie, who won't be little for long. She's just 13 weeks now and as I sketched her, I took note of what will be some impressive musculature. She's a pit bull and already bigger than her fully grown brother, a Boston Terrier.

On the Maple Trail

Inktober Challenge, Day 9. Had a wonderful time with my kids and granddoggies at Hoyt Arboreturm today. I haven't done a lot of plein air drawing or painting since I moved back to the mainland, so it was a treat to sit on a rock in the sun on this beautiful, sunny fall day with my favorite ink pen and sketchbook. A truly perfect day.

Plan Ahe...

Inktober Challenge, Day 7. I took a workshop many years ago with watercolor legend Irving Shapiro, who taught "Fail to plan, or plan to fail." It's so important, yet I so often just plunge in, like I did today. Although you may not notice at first glance, these are my two grandoggies battling over a stuffed toy. I ran out of page before Billie showed up. Oh well, next time. 

Grasshopper

Inktober Challenge, Day 3. This little guy was camped out on a nearby chair while the cat and I enjoyed the early fall sunshine on the patio this afternoon. The photo I snapped was pretty poor quality so I did a lot of guessing. I just googled it and see that I missed his mouth parts completely. Woops. Left off an antenna too. Then I ran out of ink. Done.

Pensive Cowboy

Inktober Challenge, day 2. Cringing inwardly as I post this, but I do want to post whatever daily sketch I come up with on this challenge, good bad or ugly. A perfect sketch isn’t really the point. So, here goes. On this day, we awoke to the gut wrenching news that a deranged shooter murdered 59 people in Las Vegas and injured another 527. I wanted my drawing to reflect the somberness of the day. The attitude in this old cowboy speaks of reflection and heavy thoughts to me.

Birthday Pirate

Today is day 1 of the Inktober Challenge, which I'll try to do, but no promises to myself or anyone else. It coincides with my brother's birthday and since I had dug out a picture of him from small kid time to tease him on Facebook, I decided to try a quick sketch of it. Such a goofball, sitting on our old kitchen counter in his homemade pirate regalia. The skull and crossbones flag and the torn, raggedy jeans were a nice touch but I really love the mustache and sideburn, penciled in with Mom's eyebrow pencil. He has a grandchild about this age now. Hard to believe how quickly the years have passed. He may be a grampa, but he's still the same ol' goofball.

At the Falls

The photo for this painting was taken earlier this summer and is of my daughter at her favorite waterfalls located in the Eagle Creek vicinity.  Not long after it was taken, a wildfire devastated the area, burning close to 50,000 acres (and still less than 50% contained).  It will be some time before we can get back to her falls to see what remains but in the meantime, I made this small painting to remind her of happier times.

Wild Thing

It's Saturday, so I'm playing. This was supposed to be a fox but I messed up his nose. So I chopped it off! Now he kind of looks like a bear to me.

Cape Florida Lighthouse

This was fun. The screenshot from Google streetview had lots of contrast but not much color so I drew on recent memories of colorful skies due to the Gorge fires to spark my imagination.

Front Row Seats

Time does fly when you're having a good time. Maybe with summer coming to a close, I'll find more time to paint. Here's a beach scene for this month's Virtual Paintout in Florida. May its natural beauty be soon restored and life return quickly to normalcy for those effected by the hurricane.

Awakening of Nature

From Google street view in a botanical garden in Buenos Aires (sculpture by Juan de Pari (1857-1931)).

Cleaning Fish

This sketch drawn with water soluble markers in my sketchbook refused to dissolve with water as it should have so was washed over with watercolor. Even the watercolor sunk into the paper so blending/moving the paint was impossible. Oh well, I kind of like its graphic nature.

Woman with a Shell Necklace

Haven't felt like painting for what seems like quite awhile, but happy I broke out the brushes today to paint this lady from Ghana via google street view. Usually street view images are blurred out for privacy but I was able to see her features just enough. The bright colors of her garments gave me a jolt I have been needing this long and grey winter.

Dreads

Another model from the Sktchy app. It has been many years since I sketched or painted from the model so I am delighted my old skills are getting a workout again. There are so many interesting people to choose from there too; it's a veritable candybox of choices to draw from.

Wistful

Another Sktchy painting. I was initially attracted to the pink hair of the model but in drawing her, it was her expressive gaze which held me.

Lady Justice

My heart is so sickened by the actions being taken on a daily basis by the newly elected president. How can it ever be right for the United States to turn its back on immigrants? It's unthinkable. Meanwhile, I paint and paint and paint, trying to make myself less miserable about it but it's helping less and less as the injustices pile up.

My First Sktchy Drawing

Sktchy, if you haven't heard of it, is an online gallery of reference photos for artists to draw from and then share the drawings. I'm fairly new to it and wasn't sure if drawing a stranger from a photo would be fun or weird, but I'm happy to report it was fun. And no worries about having the family/friends chime in on whether the nose is too big or the eyes the wrong color. In fact, I didn't try too hard for an exact likeness, although I think it is pretty close. I stopped at an early stage in the painting because I felt I captured the essence of the expression and didn't need to go beyond it.

Stone Angel

By the Sea