what nature wears every day

Can you find the spade?

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you are my sunshine

On the other side of the page . . .

I picked up this colouring book* at the Real Canadian Superstore in Cranbrook, BC on our way back from getting together with my brother and his family, my dad, and a number of other friends, some of whom I haven’t seen in many years, for a gathering in honour of my mom. She passed away this past December, but since she was living in Winnipeg at the time, away from all her friends in Calgary, we decided to hold a memorial service there once I was finished with my chemotherapy and able to travel. It was so wonderful to spend that time together.

When we were in Regina, Sask (for a small family graveside internment service), my niece, Aerien, was kind enough to give me my first aprés-chemo hair cut. It’s lovely to have hair long enough to warrant a trim. :o)

*”Cheerful Words and Sayings: A Treasure Hunt and Coloring Adventure,” by Robin Pickens

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by the light of the moon

Had a wee bit of trouble going to sleep last night. My sketchbook was handy, so, as I waited (around about 2a) for my med to take effect, I doodled by the light of the moon — my IKEA moonlight, that is :o)

6•20•16

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5•31•16

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1•23•16

Puma Road | Triumvirate

Recieved the okay to post the illustrations I created for Ray Franscioni Wines’ new Puma Road label, a blend of three wines they’ve named Triumvirate. So, here they are . . .

The winemaker was looking for a marble statuesque appearance, capturing a similar feel as the sample images I was sent of statues of the original Triumvirate (Julius Caesar, Pompeius Magnus (“Pompey the Great”) and Marcus Crassus). I submitted two versions, one with “carved” pupils on the pumas, and one without (matching the look of the eyes on the statue of Julius Caesar I was sent). They chose the one without detail in the eyes.

Not sure how the artwork is going to be treated on the label, as yet. They might reproduce it as a shaded emboss, or they might do it as a greyscale image like they did on the other puma road labels. When they’ve decided and it’s been printed, I’ll post. :o)

Warming up

I’ve been sitting here doing a fun drawing warm-up this morning and listening to an album on Spotify — Flamenco Music – Instrumental Spanish Flamenco Guitar by the Gypsy Flamenco Masters. I have another commissioned illustration to do for Ray Franscioni Wines. They’re launching a new brand and asked me to create some artwork. So, that’s one of my projects for the day. Pretty exciting.

On the first night of class, Laura brought over her iPhone to show us a picture of the dress for this year’s performances. She smiled and said something about showing us how beautiful it was as a bribe so that we’d stay, keep coming to class. :o)

Here’s a sketch of what I’m remembering it looks like . . .

If you keep going . . .

“If you keep going, you’ll get there. Consistency is the key to success.”
~ Unknown

I promised that I’d post a scan of my geometric shapes study when I had a version I liked well enough. Once I got going on it, though, I decided to do a single drawing and keep working on it until it reached a state of finished-ness, when I felt I had accomplished what I had intended for the exercise. So, over the last few (several?) months, mostly when I’ve had opportunity after my morning walk to sit at my table for a while, I’ve been working on it, bit by bit, layer by layer.

I gave myself a couple of specific challenges for the project:

• First of all, I had to do it freehand, without the use of a grid. My purpose was to break away from using that method (not that there’s anything inherently the matter with it — it was Leonardo daVinci who devised the perspective grid, after all), to train my eye to see proportion within the scene as a whole, the positive and negative space, how each shape related to the others.

• Secondly, I was not allowed to use a ruler to draw any of the lines, or use my circle stencil to create the sphere. I allowed myself to use them as a way to check, but again, I wanted to train my eye to observe and then render.

I overworked some areas of the paper as I erased, redrew, laid down more layers of the different pencils, so the graphite doesn’t have a smooth and consistent tone in some places, but I think I’m getting a handle on the technique. I started shading the sphere first, then, when I began shading the cube, I discovered that I had apparently decided to make it shorter than the one in the reference drawing. I made some adjustments to give it better proportion, but chose not to do a complete re-draw, to accept the “flaw” and carry on. Learn from it for the next time.

So here it is, and as one of my favourite music directors would say, “It’s close enough for jazz.” You can click on the image to see it larger.

To see the original reference drawing click here (it should open in a new window).

Next step — watch and do the exercises on the 5-Pencil Method’s “How to Draw a Portrait” DVD . . .

P.S. If any of you know the source for the quote, please let me know :o) I’d like to give proper credit.