Waiting for pizza...

Look what I found! A few spare minutes!!!

Sometimes when I have a lot on my plate, the Lord "blesses" me with sleeplessness. So, I've actually been up quite early yesterday and today with a little bit of time to spend with the sketchbook. Right now, I'm waiting to order the 29 pizzas for our party this afternoon - can't order until 10:00 a.m. - so I thought I'd blog really quick.

Anyway, I'm working through many of the details of my chicken drawing, particularly colors. Every drawing I do seems to bring technical issues that I have to sort through and learn about. In this case, the scene turned into a night scene and there's issues of lights - such as a neon sign - that I'm having to deal with.

I think it's wonderful, though. Every little thing that comes up like this is just a little more added to my visual vocabulary. Hopefully, it will make my future work flow more smoothly. However, I couldn't imagine that there is a point where you're not discovering something new as you go.

No visuals to share on the chicken. But, I'm including a page from the sketchbook. You'll notice the doll in the upper right might look familiar - I've posted the acrylic study of that drawing before. You can also see the painting in the photo slideshow of my work at the top of this blog.

Beside the sketch, you can see the study of my daughter's doll that I did in order to figure out the positioning and how the dress would fall. Everything else on the page is just more "kiddy stuff" doodles. Who knows - maybe the bear will end up in a children's book. The little shoe-car down at the bottom is an actual wooden car my husband had made with his dad when he was a Boy Scout.

A Game to Get Things Rolling...

It's funny how when you finally have time for yourself, you still manage to fill it with a lot of "other" things. In spite of having the night off from work, it was still after 8:00 p.m. before I finally let myself go out to the drawing table. Then, I was really too tired to do much - just a smidge of sketching. Besides, my studio is in the garage - a little chilly in winter (even if I am in California with a space heater).

Anyway, today was different. I did have some morning stuff to do, but I managed to get out to the studio around 12:30, just after lunch, and spend a good 2 hours solid. I have to work tonight, so I have to figure in a little "rest" time and dinner prep.

Since time is precious and I can spend a great deal of it trying to decide what to do, I came up with sort of a game to help me get started. I figured it would serve as a "warm-up," but if I get into what I'm doing, then I'd just keep going. I simply wrote down about 25 different subjects such as farm animal, household furniture, buildings, etc. on different pieces of paper and threw them into a bowl. I did the same with several different materials such as charcoal, ink, watercolor, etc. I then chose one paper from each bowl - the subject I would warm-up with and the material I would have to use. I did it today for the first time and came up with "bear" and "colored pencil." (shown above)

I probably worked on it for about 30 minutes before I moved on, but it turned out to be a fun way to get the creativity flowing. I'm not sure that the bear's foreshortened leg is very accurate, but I didn't have a bear handy. When I got tired of working on it, I switched over to a project that had been a doodle, but I'm redoing it as a completed picture. I'll share that in a future post.