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.