Mid November 11th week school

I am trying very hard this week to get my brain around the fact that it is November and Christmas is only one month away. I need to get some plans made for the Holidays, and am having problems getting myself in gear. Hopefully everyone else is doing better then I am.

This week I didn't have my drawing class so I don't have a lot of images to show. However that said I did take my at home time to finish up my Shoe project for the Color and Design class, the image directly below is the original drawing of 20 shoes. They were supposed to be sketches but I did a bit more detail then that because I didn't want to find the shoe to redraw it onto the cold press board. In the end I had to dig out some of the shoes as I didn't have as much detail as I needed. Still it was easier to draw them the second time around so it wasn't to bad to do them that way.

Sorry the image isn't great, but it is pencil on paper which is tricky to photograph, and I had to use the flash on the camera because we have a rainy overcast day here in MA and without the flash the image is blurry.

Here is the finished project, which I rather like, pen and ink with some gray on a Cold Press Board. Lots of details in this so it took way to many hours to get done. Still it is a piece I feel I can show off if I need to so I think it was worth the effort.

In computer graphics we are finishing up our software learning with In-Design Adobe's publishing software which is taking over in a lot of shops from Quark Express. I have an exercise that I need to complete and then we will be move on to our final project. Wish me luck. As always comments are welcome.

Nov 10th week of school

Another week of school has come and gone. This week in school we started landscapes. The one I did in class is below. In my opinion the photo makes it look better then it is, I wasn't very happy with this one.

I think my problem with it is that I was using ink, then I went to ink with a brush and was having an issue getting the right tones. I also had a problem getting the building/church with the right perspective so didn't start inking it until later in the class. This is not a technique that I feel I have a handle on, guess that means I should do more of it. It is too much like watercolor which I never liked to do.

Last Tues was my last drawing class for a while, this next week we have no class because of Veterans Day (Holiday) and the following week is a day the school is taking off for students to meet with their advisers so they can set up classes for the winter term. Since I am not enrolled in a degree program I am not sure where I stand with that one. Oh well, I will find out.

Our homework for drawing is to do a landscape. I have done mine in pencil which I have posted below. I may do another as I can't decide if I like this one or not. It is done with pencil, but I did spend a fair amount of time on it, and used different pencils so as to get a pretty good dark where I needed it. It is from a photo I took in our local park a couple of falls ago. Without color you can't see that the leaves are turning, which is why some of the background trees seem so light.

I also have pictures for you of my homework from 2 weeks ago, these were ink drawings, two with just black and white, no shading, and the third a silhouette of a football player that I found in Sports weekly. The missing part of the foot is because they cropped the picture and I didn't want to guess. The other two images are from photo's the instructor provided for us to use for our drawings.

I rather like the football player, he is really quite graceful

In Color and Design class I am still working on my shoes, though I think I have figured out what I will do for the other two stamps I need for my next project - Memorial day for one, and Lenard Bernstein for the last. I have been thinking about my final project, but find I want more details about what we are supposed to be doing. Another student is working on her project, which I think isn't a good idea just yet but that is her.

In Computer Graphics I am working on my final project. The instructor has been going over how the project needs to be laid out in class and I am taking notes. But more importantly I attended A Quilters Gathering in Nashua, NH this past weekend to take pictures. I now have a bunch of pictures to work with and need to look at what I have to decide how to use them. I did print contact sheets so I have thumbnails but really need to know what we are supposed to be demonstrating with this project so I can think about how I want to use the images.

Oh yes, I enjoyed the show, lots of great quilts and I was fairly restrained at the vendors, purchasing some fat quarters and a book on machine quilting.

Still haven't finished my challenge quilt, but I am working on it and a lot of the quilting is done. Today I cut the strips for the binding so that is one chore out of the way. Maybe some time next week I will be able to update the blog with an image of the completed quilt.

November, 9 week of school

Only have a few pictures for you this week. I am working on a couple of other class projects but they aren't at a stage where I want to take pictures. I did finish my portrait, so have two pictures for you from my Color Design Class. Not sure how good they are, one is done in pencil which doesn't photo well and the other on thin tracing paper. The technique was to mark 1/2 inch grids on the tracing paper then fill in the squares with different pen strokes to reproduce the portrait with values. I am glad it is done, it was not a lot of fun to do.

I think the pencil portrait works better then the ink. I had trouble translating some of the values well. Oh well it is done for what it is worth.

In drawing we were doing perspective, both one point and 2 point, at least for class exercises, then we moved out to the hallway and drew the hall in one point perspective. Below is my drawing, in pencil so the photo isn't wonderful. I didn't get my starting rectangle small enough (at least I think that is the error), so by the time I got to the opening where I needed to put doors the opening ended up too large compared to what it should be. Oh well otherwise it works. My homework is to do another perspective drawing, but he wants us to use deep space, and I don't have any deep spaces in my apt. so I am trying to think of where I can go sit and work for a few hours - I will probably tomorrow afternoon. Wish me luck.

My last image for you is actually 3 cards that I created and printed the other day. They use the ink drawings that were my drawing homework from 2 weeks ago. My instructor in the Color Design class though they would make good cards when I showed them to her, so I played around with Photo Shop on Thursday and created these. They are kind of fun, but I want more drawings to work with, so I have started a 4th and have an idea for a 5th drawing, more flowers of course.

On the quilting front last Friday we received the next Challenge for the FFFC group. I have been working on my quilt, but it isn't finished yet. I got involved with cards, and working on my shoe project for Color and Design. I was also doing research for my Color and Design Stamp project that is coming up. I have made major progress with the shoes, finished drawing my 20 and am in the middle of transferring 18 of the designs to a cold press board to be inked in. However all the work on class work means that the challenge piece isn't finished. I have it designed, the fabrics cut out and am in the process of machine appliquing the pieces down. Hopefully I will get that done today sometime, and get the quilting done so I can work on borders.