A couple more drawings done or at least started in Chicago. Above is a portrait from a photograph in one of last years National Geographic's. Their photographs are often fun to use as a reference because they get the lighting right, usually strongly directional which shades one side of the face while highlighting the other.
Not sure how well I did with this one, not too bad as I recall, but of course there are errors, I haven't gotten to the point of not having them. Oh Well, just have to keep working at it.
One of those subjects that I seem to return to again and again are cups. You would think I would get tired of them, but I find them an endless challenge to get right. The one above was started in Chicago but finished here at home when I realized I had done my usual trick and slanted it to the right. I turned the drawing upside down, realized my major error and tried to correct it as much as possible without the reference cup.
Wish I knew why I do that, because I am right handed, or is a visual issue with my eyesight? I suppose either is possible as I do have to wear glasses and have an astigmatism. I will just have to remind myself that I need to flip drawings with vertical lines upside down to check how perpendicular they are to the base line before I get too far with the drawing.
Do you suffer from the same problem I do? Too many pencils to fit easily into traditional pencil holders. Below you can see photographs of my solution to my problem, home made pencil holders.
I start with paper towel tubes, cut them into lengths, usually 4 or 3 inches, cover them with fabric (I quilt so I have lots of fabric), then seal with acrylic gloss medium. I use thinned Elmers School Glue to glue the fabric to the tubes, applying to the surface of the tube, wrapping the fabric around it and then applying more glue to the surface. The fabric is usually about 2 inches longer than the tube so I fold it over the top and bottom of the tubes to give a neat edge. I allow the glue to dry before applying the medium.
Once all the tubes are dry again I use hot glue to glue the tubes together. Then using thin cardboard which has been cut to shape I hot glue the tubes to the cardboard. This gives the tubes a bottom so the pencils don't fall out. The bottom image above shows most of my pencils in their holders. These are just my colored pencils and some of my graphite ones. The watercolor pencils are in different containers.
I like the tubes because each tube will only hold so many pencils (about 12 to 18 depending on the dia. of the pencil). I can take pencils out of the holders to use without having the rest of them fall over which I have found to be a problem when using a large container that holds a lot of pencils. Question for the day: Can one have too many pencils?
I am ending the update today with a sequence of three photographs made over about 24 hours:
Here in Eastern MA we had a couple of days of blowing snow along with quite cold temperatures. The above series of photographs was made out of one of my windows showing a south facing porch railing that got covered with snow and what happened to the snow over about 24 hours. Top photograph was made shortly after it had finished snowing (around noon Friday) The middle photograph was made later that afternoon and shows how the ridge of snow had sagged but not fallen to the deck. The bottom photograph shows the snow yesterday morning sort of drooping in the middle but still hanging in there. As I recall it fell to the deck about an hour after I made the photograph so the railing is now free from snow. Usually snow on the railings just falls or is blown off, so this sequence is quite unusual.
That is it for today, per usual comments are welcome.
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