Happy New Year 2018 - Chicago Street Art

I want to wish all my readers a Happy 2018, may you have good health, good luck and good times this coming year.

Per usual I spent Christmas and New Year's at my sisters in Chicago. For the first part of my visit the weather wasn't too bad so on a couple of days (one cloudy) I was able to get out and about with the camera. Then a cold front came in and it was too cold to spend much time outside and with the wind chill factor dangerous to exposed skin (temps were below 10 degrees F on a couple of days) so my photography trips were called off, it was just too darn cold.

Anyway Chicago has a lot of hmm, lets call it street art. These first two photos are buildings that have been painted to call attention to themselves. Both of these are restaurants, the top one a barbecue place and the one below I think was a Mexican Restaurant.  For the barbecue place they just painted the building over the entrance. In the one below they painted the entire rear of the adjoining building, fake windows, fake arch, fake courtyard and even fake stairs. I am sure that in the summer there are tables in this area and it must be a pleasant place to sit and eat. The fountain is real.

Please don't ask me where these restaurants are, I have no clue other than on the North side of downtown Chicago and toward the lake, Lincoln Park area (I think) I do all my wanderings starting on foot from my sisters and usually walk toward the lake (east) and usually south (toward downtown) but I don't really bother with street names or addresses. If I end up over by the lake and Lincoln Park I know which buses will get me back to her house otherwise I am happy to just wander. 

But Chicago also likes to put up sculptures and other types of art works on street corners and in small parks.

The colorful bends above are to mark one of the areas that make up the City of Chicago, The sign says Lakeview East, different areas have different signs.

Above is one of the Corner Sculptures I found, I don't recall what the marker said about it. It just sits out on a street corner, I would think that they might be worried that someone would try to take it, but then again maybe not.

Near a Children's Hospital I found a small park, there was a sculpture of children playing a circle game in the center of the park, and this one on the corner, not sure what it is supposed to be.

As a final photograph, Chicago has a Nature Museum located a bit north of the Lincoln Park Zoo. It is near a pond and also fairly close to the Lake (Lake Michigan) Instead of a lawn with mowed grass they have landscaped much of the area around the building as native prairie: using native shrubs and plants. The photo above is of some flower heads (seed heads) left from last summer. I don't know what the flower is/was but thought the seed heads interesting.

I have visited the Museum in the past, they have a butterfly room with live mostly tropical butterflies, it was fun to try and photograph them, they also have exhibits showcasing native animals and their habitat.  A good place to visit with young children, when my sister and I visited food was in short supply so I suggest a packed lunch if you are in the area and want to visit.

That is it for today, not sure when my next update will be or what it will be about. I am finding that I don't have a lot of motivation to get out the camera when it is freezing cold or the ground is snow covered. Ah well, per usual comments are welcome.

Finishing Off Old Starts

 Most of what I am posting today was started last year. The above is the inked final of a piece I started a while ago in pencil but decided I wanted to ink it instead of leaving it as a graphite work. Problem was I didn't have any nibs that made a fine enough line and for this one I really wanted to use a dip pen with India Ink. So for Christmas I asked Santa to bring me some Hunts Crow Quill nibs, which Santa was kind enough to do. In anticipation of the gift I had brought the pencil version of this with me to my Sisters over Christmas and then did the inking there after Christmas Day.

This is done on Stonehenge toned paper, though the color isn't really showing up in the scan. Size of paper is 7 x 7 inches though I think what is in the scan is more like 6 x 6 inches. I don't have a name for it so if anyone has suggestions I would love to hear them. Just goes to show you can stipple with a dip pen, if you are careful.

 Again this was started last summer when I was first experimenting with using color washed cold press watercolor paper as the background for my ink drawings. The flowers here are Foxglove, both the larger flowers and the whole plants in the background. All are based on some personal photographs.

I used a dip pen with acrylic Sepia ink for this one, the nib is a Japanese Manga nib, so it gives a relatively fine line, not as fine as the Hunts Crow Quill but fine. I am rather pleased with how this came out, even if it did take way to long to finish. The good thing about art is that usually it will wait.

Someone asked about the technique, it is just semi short parallel lines made so they are drawn close together to create the tonal value I am looking for, not close together for lighter areas, and basically overlapping for the darker. I did do a pencil sketch, at least outlines prior to inking.

Now this piece is new. I did the background watercolor wash on a long strip of cold press watercolor paper and cut it in two to make two bookmarks. The design is based on some of the architectural features I photographed on buildings in Chicago over my Christmas visit. I used a dip pen with the Manga nib to ink this with black India Ink. I think it is kind of fun and am thinking about using more of my reference photographs for additional works. It isn't quite finished I need to give it a few coats of Acrylic Medium to waterproof and stiffen it, but I wanted to wait until the ink was thoroughly dry prior to bushing the Medium on over the ink. The size is 6 inches by 2 inches.

Two photographs from a recent visit to Daniel Webster, MA Audubon site in Marshfield, MA. The above shows a mallard duck taking off from the Green River. They were feeding on the river when I walked by and started them.

The above photo was made in the Bird feeder area at Daniel Webster, both Mr. & Mrs Cardinal. The male is top right and the duller female is at the 2nd feeder lower left. Love the new camera that lets me make these bird photos without them being totally blurry.

That is it for today, yeah, I have actually managed a 2nd post this month. Not sure I will get back to weekly updates but hopefully I will be able to keep up the bi-weekly ones. Per usual comments are welcome.

Happy New Year 2017

I want to wish everyone a Happy, Healthy, 2017. May some of your wishes/dreams come true this coming year.

I spent about 2 weeks in Chicago visiting my sister and her family, which is why the blog hasn't been updated. I take the train from Boston to Chicago (and back home), for me it is a straight run, though we do stop in Albany, NY to link up with the train coming up from NYC. It takes about 22/23 hours but I have room for my feet/legs, I can sleep and get up and walk around so I find this method of travel not at all bad. It may take longer than flying but I don't have to go through security, I don't have to pay to have my bag checked, I get a discount for being a senior and the tickets are less to begin with. I also don't have to put my car in long term parking someplace, so that is another expense I don't have. All in all I am happier taking the train than flying. Flying is no fun any more, and I don't miss it.

Enough about my personal life. Over the holidays I tried to get back into the groove of making some art. My efforts are taking too long, I don't seem to have the concentration to just sit and work for hours on something, but I am doing some art.

Above is a bookmark, about 2 x 6 inches on cold press watercolor paper. I painted the background with watercolors before heading to Chicago and I took some reference photos with me to have something to work on. The bird is a tufted titmouse at a bird feeder. I photographed this little one with the new camera so the photo I was working from was sharp with lots of detail.

I used the copic multiliners to ink this little guy, and I am fairly pleased with the results. Esp. as it has been so long since I did any drawing other than doodles.

Also done over my Christmas holiday. My sister gave me some Hunts crow quill nibs for Christmas, well I did ask for them, and the above piece was me playing with the new nib and India Ink. Again this is done on cold press watercolor paper that had been pre-painted. Just various designs and textures. Still I think it is kind of fun and it was a good way to start getting my hand back into the groove of using dip pens before moving on to a more challenging piece.

A slight digression here, my sister had to order my nibs on-line, no brick and mortar art store seems to carry Hunt Nibs, they only seem to have Speedball or some Japanese Manga nibs. The Japanese nibs are good, better than the Speedball nibs but not quite as fine and I was looking for, hence the request for the Hunts nibs. I have also discovered that my local art supply store no longer carries a brand name India Ink, well, they have Speedball ink, but I don't consider Speedball inks to be artist quality. I am planning a trip into Boston soon and hope that Blicks still carries a good quality India Ink. The store owner was telling me that some stocks just are no longer available for purchase here in the US, like Hunts nibs. All I can say is bother, how are students supposed to learn if they can't purchase quality supplies. Thank heaven for the Internet, at least there are still a few suppliers that carry those products.

Another bookmark, again cold press watercolor paper pre-painted, this one was also done with my copic multiliners. Just felt like doing stars. It didn't turn out quite the way I envisioned it but it will have to do.

I also spent time working on a pencil drawing for my colored pencil series, and I also worked a bit on a couple of the colored pencil pieces I started last year. I do hope to finish the series this year, but we will see.

Thought I would share a few photographs. Above is the Chicago skyline from the Arboretum in Lincoln Park which is just outside the zoo. The photo is looking over the lawns toward the zoo and the city.

Above is Lake Michigan with a front moving in. It was actually a warm front, unlike the typical Chicago Christmas weather we had a lot of warmish days this year. Warmish is of course relative, but for Chicago in late December anything above freezing during the day is warm. After I left a cold front came through and put them back into the freezer.

We had about 8 inches of snow over this past weekend, the above photo was made in my local park, showing the frozen pond and snow covered trees. I just like the lighting in this photo.

If you want to see more photos from my Chicago trip visit my facebook page, link at the bottom of the page.

That is it for today, I won't say I have made a resolution to do more postings this year, but it is my intention. In the meantime comments are always welcome.

Finished Colored Pencil and other

I wanted to finish the Purple Headed Sneezeweed work before I updated the blog. I really don't like posting in-process photos of works, I sort of feel that it is OK to post the beginnings of a piece, but once the drawing reaches a certain point (over half way finished) it seems to me that posting photos sort of ruins the final reveal. You are of course entitled to your own opinion.

Anyway above is a scan of the final work. The colors aren't quite right, scanners never seem to get yellow quite right, I have a feeling it has to do with the pigments used to create the color. So I have played with this a bit in Photoshop, this is a good as I could get it. When we get a sunny or less overcast day I will try to get a photograph of the drawing and see if I can do better color wise with the camera.

This was done on Stonehenge paper, size of the finished work is approximately 6 x 6 inches. I used a combination of many colors and different brands of colored pencils, mostly underlayers of various Derwent brands, Colorsoft, Artists, and Studio with final overlays of Faber Castell Polychromos. The flower is based on a personal photograph I made last summer the background is totally my imagination, but I rather like it.

The above piece is more of my playing around with a dip pen and colored inks. I decided I needed to take a bit of time away from the colored pencil work and do some sketching from real life, fruit is always good for quick studies so above are 2 pears and an apple. I really just wanted to play with the inks so I wasn't too concerned about accuracy. Done in my Strathmore Multi Media Journal, I used Red, Yellow, Antelope Brown and Indigo Blue acrylic inks for the fruit after making the initial outline with one of my technical pens in black ink. Not wonderful, but sort of fun anyway.

One day last week I took the bus into Boston, I wanted to visit Dick Blicks and the MFA. On the way in I sketched one of my fellow passengers. Just a quick sketch, but not too bad. I used a mechanical pencil for this in one of my smaller sketchbooks.

At the large Dick Blicks in Boston I discovered that they are now carrying open stock of the Caran d'Ache Luminance colored pencils. Oh my, I am in trouble now, well my budget is. These are very expensive pencils, but they are also the most colorfast pencils on the market so of course I want them. I already have a few and now I have the opportunity to acquire more.

At the MFA they are sort of between major shows. The artwork from the Americas showing the influences of Eastern art on western art is still on-going but the Dutch paintings are gone. There are a couple of smaller exhibits of some interest, one is some of the Photographs of Hiro. He was mostly a fashion/advertising photographer still some of his photos are iconic. The other is some of the fashion illustrations of Kenneth Paul Block. I found it interesting how over time he distorted the human form to feature the fashions he is illustrating, bodies and limbs become elongated, heads and feet were made smaller. In his drawings the clothes are what is important not the faces or accurate portraits of the models. The Illustrations range from some of his earlier works to later ones, and it is interesting to see how the figure is more distorted over time, the earlier illustrations show more realistic human models, the later ones are less and less realistic.

Since I am trying to get less realistic for my own art I am trying to pay attention to how other artists do or don't use realism in their works. Not sure I am succeeding with my goal, drawing realistically is a habit that is hard to break, but I think I now have a better understanding of what Picasso was trying to do with some of his art. I am not going to go that way with mine, but I can understand why he did.

A couple of snow photographs from this past weekend. We did get some of the snow that blanketed the east coast the end of last week, but no where near the amount of snow they got to the south of us, particularly in the mid Atlantic states. We got maybe six inches of snow not several feet. But we did get wind. The photo above shows how the snow was blown about settling in patterns and layers.

The snow was just damp enough to stick to trees, so above is a small tree with its icing of snow, you can see some of the trees behind it have a coating on one side of their trunks. I always love photographing snow when it has stuck to the trees this way.

That is it for today, per usual comments are welcome.

Colored Inks, and beginning Colored Pencil

The above Hibiscus flower was done entirely with various colored acrylic inks and a dip pen. I used a half sheet of Strathmore toned paper for the background. The size is about 5 x 6 inches. I did rough in a pencil outline of the flower and main leaves first but as I inked the background first I was able to erase out most of the pencil prior to starting the the flower. I didn't use any black ink on this, just various colors, red, green, antelope brown, and yellow, and oh yes a little Indigo blue in the background and on some of the leaves.

The reference is from the January Monthly challenge in the WetCanvas Pen and Ink forum.

I am relatively pleased with how this came out and may try to do more flowers this way. The only drawback is that color placement does have to be thought out a bit prior to inking, and I can only ink one color at a time so it isn't quick and there is a fair amount of pen cleaning involved. I keep a small jar of my pen cleaning solution close at hand, and always rinse that off in clean water after cleaning the pen.

I have started the colored pencil work on this inked flower, so far I have just been working on the background abstract leaves. Selecting the colors has been fun, but I think what you see is what I will be using for the rest of the background, I am using under layers of Derwent colored pencils with a top layer of Polychromos. The Derwents are wax based pencils and the Polychromos are oil based and a bit more translucent than the wax pencils.
 

The other day I was out for a walk in my local park and saw a tree trunk/stump in a clearing that I thought might make an interesting drawing. I made a reference photo at the time and used it as the basis for the above sketch. I used Sepia Acrylic ink and dip pen in one of my smaller sketchbooks for this drawing.

The drawing didn't actually take very long to do, but I am quite pleased with how it came out. Guess my occasional plein air landscape drawings are starting to pay off when it comes to figuring out how to suggest distance and textures with pen and ink.

The above is pretty much a doodle done in one of my sketchbooks with my Copic Multiliner pens (various tip sizes). Just playing around to see what values/textures I can come up with using just ink. No reference and not really trying to create a finished drawing, but depicting tone/texture with ink is a constant challenge so these doodles do have a purpose. 

We had more snow over the weekend, not a lot, just about 3 inches, not even enough for them to haul out the plows, but with the snow has come cold air and wind. Yesterday I went for a walk up in the Blue Hills Reservation, I was going to check out the animals at Trailside Museum, but I had forgotten about the ski slope on Great Blue Hill, so parking for Trailside was pretty impossible. Causing me to pass on the Museum and drive directly over the Houghton's Pond. The photo above was made at the pond, and shows an area that is just east of the beach. The sky was very blue yesterday though the wind was cold, so I can't say that I entirely enjoyed my walk, got a bit chilled.

Speaking of blue, I just finished reading a book about blue. It is mostly about blue dye, originally done in the Mediterranean using the gland of a sea snail, until plant indigo was introduced from the East, even then it was the preferred dye of the upper classes. The author includes all sorts of linked information, Mediterranean History, how we see blue, the chemistry of Indigo and how the historic dyeing process was rediscovered. So if you are curious about the color blue prior to our chemical dyes this is a very interesting read:  The Rarest Blue

That is it for today, per usual comments are always welcome.

Playing with Watercolor and Pen

The one thing all of todays drawings have in common is they were done with pen and ink and watercolor. Not always pan or tube watercolor, I did use watercolor pencils for the abstract design, but since I did take the time to activate the pencil with a brush and water it is still watercolor.

Above is a small still life, bowl of fruit on one of my quilts. I rendered the quilt in a very abstract way, just to see if I could. Don't know how I feel about this, could certainly be better but could also be worse. Added the darkened background because I wanted the visual contrast. No pencil work in this one, everything was done directly.

Another of my sort of paisley doodles. I am much happier with the colors I used here. For one thing I limited the number of colors I used to fewer than I used in the last one. I don't know how many more of these I have in me right now, will just have to wait and see. In the meantime I may pull one of these into Illustrator to see if I could actually design an overall pattern that could be used for fabric. It would make an interesting challenge for 2016.

Above is another watercolor sketch/painting. Well it isn't awful but could certainly be better that is for sure. I based the painting on a photograph I made last fall in the Fens area of Boston. The black tree I did with ink, and probably should have used paint for it but... I wanted to use ink so I did. At one point I was afraid I was overworking this piece, but looking at it now, I think I mostly didn't. Watercolor is so easy to overwork ending up with muddy color and no definition. I didn't go quite as dark on the right side of the painting as it is in the photograph but I am not sure that is a bad thing.

For this one done in my Strathmore Multi-media sketchbook I did block in a few pencil marks prior to starting the painting. Not a lot of detail, but I did note where I wanted the tree, the line of the top of the bridge, a line for the top of the building, that type of thing. Note that all of today's images were done in my Multi-media sketchbook so are small about 5 x 7 inches or less.

My reference photograph for the above watercolor painting. I may attempt this one again on larger and better paper.

Sunday for us was a day of rain, lots of rain, which we still need from our dry summer and fall last year. The water levels in the lakes/ponds are looking better but I know the water table is still probably lower than it should be.

We did get a few breaks in the rain and during one of those breaks I photographed the swan pair in my local park. Just realized when I was editing the photo that Sunday was the first time I hadn't seen the signets with their parents, well I think these are the pair that had young last summer, but maybe not. Swans sort of look pretty much alike and I certainly can't tell the pairs apart. But the above pair was only the one I saw out and about so who knows if it is the same one and the young have just taken off to find mates and a home elsewhere or if the whole family left and another pair has moved in.

That is it for today. Per usual comments are always welcome.

Happy 2016, and Some Ink Work

On one hand I can't believe I let the entire month of December go by without one blog update, on the other hand it makes total sense. Thanksgiving was late in 2015, leaving just 4 weeks till Christmas. For me Thanksgiving was a wake up call, buy presents, get them wrapped and mailed, make travel reservations, figure out what I wanted to take, pack, then travel. It didn't leave me a lot of time for art or the blog. Then I spent 2 weeks in Chicago, a great place to visit but it wasn't feasible to try and make any blog updates while I was there. Though I did draw while in Chicago, that is mostly where the images in today's post were made. Then I had to travel home, and try to settle back into my life, taking care of plants, returning books to library, laundry, groceries, bills, etc. I am thankful to say that is all mostly done. So today I am belatedly turning my attention to the blog.

The above is sort of a doodle, but not entirely, I think I have it in the back of my brain to attempt to design some fabric. The above is a first attempt. I used 3 different sized technical pens then watercolor pencils to add a bit of color. The watercolor was activated with a damp brush. I am not happy with the colors, and while I think the patterns have possibilities it doesn't quite work. So expect to see some more of this type of work. Whether it will actually become a fabric design I don't know at this point, we will just have to see.

You may or may not be aware that there is currently a revival with coloring books, these are mostly aimed at adults who don't feel they can draw but love color, and are happy to spend the time and effort coloring others drawings. I thought it might be fun to design some works that could be downloaded and used by others as templates to color. The subjects are based on photographs I have made, and I have tried to create simplified outlines that can be filled in. I have yet to decide where to upload large images for download, probably in my Esty shop, so stay tuned.

Above are three mallard ducklings. the drawing and ink work are done, image scanned and it is time for me to do some coloring with this one. My drawing was done on Stonehenge paper and I inked them with my technical pens, size is 7 x 7 inches.

The flowers in the above drawing are purple headed sneezeweed and the reference photograph was one I used in my Flowers 2016 calendar. The background leaf pattern is just me being creative and doesn't really reflect the reference. Another drawing ready to be colored. I will be using colored pencils for these though I suppose I could use watercolor pencils or even watercolor. Something to think about.

I have one more drawing that needs to be inked then I need to work on a couple more of these. They have been both a challenge and fun to do.

The above photograph I made in Chicago, a bush with red berries in front of a window that was reflecting a tree and sky. I thought it was sort of fun so am posting it here.

I took the train to Chicago, and since I arrived at South Station with some time to spare I took my camera for a walk and made some Boston Photos prior to departing, so this is a December photograph of the Fort Point Channel with a view of the sheep statue and some Boston buildings as a backdrop, looking northeast. Wool was an important trade commodity for Colonial Boston. Wool produced here in the Colonies was shipped back to England to be woven into cloth. Early Colonists were prohibited from shipping 100% wool cloth between colonies or exporting it out of its place of manufacture. Of course the prohibition of shipping between colonies couldn't really be enforced. So spinning and weaving became important home industries for early american Woman and Children.

That is it for today, I want to take a moment to wish everyone reading a Happy Healthy 2016, may some of your dreams and/or wishes come true this next year, may you and yours enjoy good health, and be creative. Per usual comments are welcome. Oh, there are a few Chicago photographs on my Facebook page if you are interested in looking, link at the bottom of the blog.

Regarding Snow and some drawings

I have been doing more pattern play with pen and ink. Well the pattern starts out in pencil then I ink the lines, erase the pencil and then ink a background. For the above I was working with a dip pen and my new to me acrylic inks, sepia for the outlines and black for the background and fills. I don't think I will add any colored pencil to this one, as I rather like the subtle color changes between the brown and black inks and I think it would get lost if I added more color.

Not sure where I am going with these, for some reason they appeal to me at the moment. Maybe I have been looking at too many architectural details or too many Greek vases. I am not deliberately copying anything but I wouldn't be surprised to find they remind my viewers of something specific.

I do wish I was a bit more consistent in some areas with the fill lines I put in, though I suppose that the unevenness is a sign that was done by hand and not on a computer. This is only 4 inches square done on 400 Strathmore Bristol Smooth paper, using a Japanese nib.

Drawn directly in my sketchbook with Sepia Acrylic Ink and a dip pen. I think I have the perspective slightly off, but otherwise am fairly pleased with how this came out. Shading is done with just line work and almost no crosshatching.

Back to pencil for the drawing above of a columbine flower, bud and leaf from a reference photo I made a few years ago. I love wild columbine with their red and yellow colors. They are such complex flowers and this was a challenge to draw.

I took a bit of liberty with the drawing and upped the contrast in Photoshop. I used a F lead for the drawing and the scan was looking a bit lighter than I wanted. F leads are rather hard, harder than an HB but not as hard as a 2H and I am finding them a good weight to use for my preliminary pen and ink drawings. The graphite erases easily, is light, but doesn't mark the paper. I purchase this lead in Chicago and it is Koh-i-Noor lead which I haven't seen for sale here in the states for quite a few years. Good to see them back.

Regarding snow, I have two photographs today, and the way our weather is looking (lightly snowing today, as I type) there will be more in my future. After weeks of hardly any snow we finally received some. Well a bit more than some, we had full fledged blizzard with high winds (wind gusts approx. 60 mph) and lots of snow, about 2 feet or 24 inches in my area, though it may have been more. The wind blew it around so much that it is a bit hard to judge just how much actually fell. The storm lasted about 24 hours and basically shut down the eastern half of MA for two days, one for the storm and one for dig out. It also appears to have moved us into a different weather pattern, since we are getting some snow today, more tonight/tomorrow and still more is forecast for Monday.

I think that after Monday I will be just as happy if it decides to stop snowing for the rest of the winter, though it doesn't seem likely. For the record I am fine, didn't loose power even once during the storm, and even if I had I have enough supplies on hand to hold up or as actually happened I could even have done food shopping on Wednesday if necessary.

I gather the news folks in other areas of the country made it sound like we were having a natural disaster up here. Well a few communities did suffer greatly from the storm, Nantucket Island lost power, and a couple of coastal communities suffered major damage from Ocean surges and beach erosion. Homes were lost, roads damaged but I don't believe anyone died. Still for most of us here in Eastern MA, Tuesday was a day to stay inside, watch the snow fall, maybe feed the birds and wait for the wind to drop prior to starting the clean up. Travel isn't easy, side streets are still mostly snow covered but things are getting back to normal, more or less.

OK, photos, the one above is of an almost buried headstone in an old cemetery that is just around the corner from me.

This next one shows how the city attempted to clear the sidewalk and then contractors working for a business came along and closed off one end as they cleared the parking lot/driveway for the business. This isn't a very, hmm, artistic photo but it does give the viewer a good idea of just how much snow there is that has to be cleared off of streets and sidewalks. To be honest I think I am going to be walking in the street at least some of the time for quite a while, and yes I will be careful.

That is it for today, per usual comments are welcome.

Pen and Ink with added color

Not much in the way of art making this past week. But I am working on another pen and ink pattern piece, and I did spend some time with the last one I made.

I used my new to me Caran D'Ache Luminance colored pencils to add color to that first work. They are nice pencils, I think they lay down color very well, esp. as the paper I was using, Bristol Smooth, is not known for accepting many layers of colored pencil. The colors are bright and I was able to overlay and blend with a fair amount of ease. I need to get more of these. Just wish they didn't cost around 4.00 a pencil. However for that price you get the most colorfast of all the colored pencils on the market, so I suppose they are worth it. I received a 16 pencil set for Christmas so this was my first chance to really play with them

Above is just a doodle really mostly a single line then I used some line work to shade what would be leaves and part of the trunk of the tree. Added some grass and a funny looking rabbit and called it a day. I like drawing these weird looking trees, they are just fun to draw, and I think can look interesting.

Can you identify the subject of the above quick pen and ink drawing? My winter boots, tossed on top of each other. This is another drawing from life of an item on the current WetCanvas Scavenger Hunt list. I probably should have spent a bit more time on this but wasn't really in the mood. So it is what it is.

I was hoping to post a fantastic picture which I would have taken yesterday on a Boston Harbor Cruise, Instead winter decided to arrive in the form of a minor snow storm (which could have been more) causing the cruse to be cancelled. Bother, I would have gone out in the afternoon to make some snow photographs but here on the South Shore of Boston the snow had turned to rain which only made a mess out of the snow on the ground, not something I wanted to photograph. So instead you are seeing a photo I made while in Chicago. Someone's front yard had this little statue/birdbath. I like the statue and the play of winter light that was falling over it.

I have rescheduled my cruse to February, and more snow is forecast for early next week, so you may at least get some snow photographs with  my next blog update.

In the meantime that is all for today, per usual comments are welcome.

New Bookmark and Other scribbles

I have finished the inking on another new bookmark and have an image of it above. Not quite sure what is going on here, a chick dreaming of Easter Eggs, or something. Anyway this is what I drew and rather liked so just went ahead and inked it in. It now needs to be finished off, with a protective layer of contact paper and a tassel.

Two by six inches on Stonehenge paper, various colored pens, mostly Microns but the grey is a copic fineliner.

I did the above the other day for one of the WetCanvas Scavenger Hunts. It was supposed to be hand lotion and I used this tube of body cream as a substituent. Well the body cream can be used on the hands after all and I wanted to draw something fairly simple.

I used a copic black fineliner in the dedicated sketchbook I use for challenge drawings. I was trying to not do any cross hatching on this only directional black lines.

Another Scavenger Hunt image, a new hunt so a different series of possible subjects. The challenge for this one was to draw my favorite electronic device. Right now that is my Samsung tablet that can be used for reading books, listening to books, listening to music and playing games. Not sure which activity I spend the most time doing on this device.  Again copic fineliners in my dedicated sketchbook.

I was in Boston on Friday (which is why this update is late) and visited the MFA and the Greek Vases. I was starting to feel a bit tired as I had done some walking and shopping prior to arriving at the museum so sat myself down for a bit and sketched this vase. There are problems with it, as it leans to the right a bit and the neck is a bit longer in my drawing than the real life vase had, but am otherwise not to unhappy with it. Done in my sketch book with a technical pencil that I use for these drawings. The museum doesn't want attendee's to use pens in the galleries, which I can understand.

From the Ancient Greek and Roman Galleries I went to visit the Asian Galleries and there viewed some Japanese children's games, wood block prints on paper. Then I went down to the Chinese exhibit of women in paintings, Court Ladies or Pin up Girls? I was getting rather tired by the time I arrived in the gallery showing these works and will have to go back to revisit. But they are both beautiful and a bit off putting at the same time. Some I would not hesitate to classify as porn, others would have been considered erotic by the contemporary Chinese viewer while my modern western eyes thought them just beautiful images of court life.

In paintings where the women are clothed you never see even the tips of shoes, in the paintings where the women are nude they all have tiny feet and look like they are wearing booties. This of course is the depiction of the bound feet that higher class women in China were subjected to for centuries. Makes me shudder to even think about, their feet had to hurt all the time, but walking on them must have been extremely painful. Such a cruel thing to subject little girls to, all in the supposed name of beauty.

My closing photograph today was made in Boston Commons and is of a North Sea Mine that was recovered and presented to the City of Boston as memorial for Mine Sweepers in WWI. I didn't take the time to read the whole inscription on the plaque, it was windy and cold up on the hill by the war memorial. But thought this made an interesting photograph of contrasts, esp. as it has been just 100 years since the start of that war.

That is it for today, per usual comments are welcome.