Opposites

Highly prized animals in simple, expressive sketches

These are little quick sketches of dogs and cats who live with me. These sketches were inspired by Carla Sonheim's "Cats in Bed" exercise in her great book, Drawing Lab, that I'm loving! It's fun doing quick sketches that have no detail and are more experimental practices.

Mixed media of Daisy, my service dog

Sketch of Daisy using pastel, ink, graphite. I liked to using lots of color - blues, pink, purple added to golden retriever colors. Plan to do more studies with stronger color, bolder negative spaces and play with composition.

Highly Prized

Playing with leaves: starting with representational sketch, moving to shapes, lines, movement.

My "Highly Prized" Subject

I'm delighted with the Sketchbook Challenge theme! It took 2 seconds for me to choose Daisy, my service dog as my highl prized subject. She's nine yrs. old and I've been telling myself to do some serious Daisyart as she ages. This challenge is my committment to express my love for this very important dog. How many ways can I sketch, paint, and collage this beautiful girl?

Yesterday I did a pencil sketch and as soon as I figure out how to get a photo of my work on flickr, I'll share it. The technical aspects of doing this are a big challenge!

Art Space

There's something about seeing my kitchen table and surrounding area littered with art material that pleases me. Normally, my Virgo self can't tolerate clutter but this is different. It's a freeing feeling I get. I'm reading on other people's blogs about how they're getting their space ready for The Sketchbook Challenge. Me, too but mine is mostly on the kitchen table.

So the mess I've made in the kitchen this a.m., as I painted faces on little clay suns I made yesterday suits me. Still in my flannel p.j.s, flitting back to the sink to wash brushes, getting dabs of acryllic paint on a sleeve was fun. Now you should realize that no one shares my house with me but my husband, 2 dogs, and 1 cat so they can step around me. And I don't tend to leave everything out indefinitely so it's ok. My husband is a big supporter of my art projects so he's always happy to see me get out my paints, brushes,pens, papers, pastels - anything. I have it all somewhat organized in containers, according to category: certain mugs for brushes or pens, big tubs for tubes of paint, bags for collage papers,etc.

All my stuff is so precious to me! My 2 new sketchbooks are ready for action, one already has the first page filled with faces and notes about colors. Since I can't get out - 6 in. of snow and drifts make my driveway impassable, I'm happily playing with whatever strikes my fancy.

Day After Christmas

Been loving the view out my living room window of a snow covered landscape. There's no place I need to go so I won't worry about the icy roads here on my mountain.