Green-headed Tanager

I have enjoyed working on bird drawings before, like the  white-breasted nuthatch a while back. So I am bemused that it has been so long since I did any.

Yesterday I pulled out colored pencils to work on a green-headed tanager. Color! I wonder at what point do you ever think, "Nah, its cool. I totally have enough colored pencils." Fortunately I have a decent collection in this color range.

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Sketching outside Patagonia

Today I had help getting my daily sketch done. There was a bored little one outside a local Patagonia store which we were waiting to have open. With 5 minutes still until opening, her mom was looking frazzled, I invited the little to help me do some art while we waited.

Nothing fancy, just a quick, non-fussy sketch of a bike for me. She drew lots of flowers and let me keep this one. I love the total lack of fear in which kids approach art. Notice, I was the one working in pencil, while she worked straight in marker! So I didn't agonize over the details and worked to emulate her example.

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Stained Glass Tree Mural

After running an errand this morning, I opted to walk home rather than take the bus. As a result I stumbled across a woman named Crystal painting a public mural in one of my local parks. When I inquired about taking a photo (which she graciously said yes), I was also invited to help paint. How awesome!

This is where she started the day:

The plan was to have the community help add the color so that it started to look like this:

Seriously, this was a particularly awesome surprise in my day.

Public art, created by the community = awesome!

There was a great mix of adults and kids helping out. This is where we got to by the end of the day. I can't wait to see what happens next week!

IF: Airborne

I am sort of surprised by how much the line drawing with a permanent marker is pleasing to me at the moment.

permanent marker on cardstock

The Illustration Friday prompt for today was "airborne" and inspired today's daily sketch. I am always curious to see what others will do for the week's prompt, but I like to get mine done early so as not to get distracted by my own first conception. I went with maple seed pods but later also considered dandelion seeds, paper airplanes, and hot air balloons.

Lilac and Lady's Slippers

A while back I had a desperate urge to cast on a sweater for myself. Fair enough, it has been five years since the last one. Wait, seriously? How did that happen? Well I guess I don't knit a whole lot of sweaters to begin with, so fair enough.

So I dug around in my stash of sweater yarns. (I know right. Why do I have a stash of sweater quantity yarns if I don't tend to knit sweaters. It is inexplicable.) I have been wanting to knit Dark and Stormy for ages, so that was what I had in mind as I looked through my options.

From the shrine of precious yarns, I found a bag of Reynolds Odyssey (discontinued) that I had bought from Windsor Button during their closing sale. Odyssey is one of my favorite yarns, so why not make something that I can wear all the time and actually get to enjoy it. 

The color is called lilac and is made up of many shades of soft purple, pinks and greens. From a distance it reads as a soft grey mostly, but I like the depth the color shifts add.

I worked on yesterday's daily sketch while Chiquita worked on her homework next to me on the couch. Earlier in the day I had kept putting away this image, thinking I should do it some other time. Ultimately like the lilac sweater, I realized "Why? What am I waiting for?"

mechanical pencil on cardstock

I had originally been planning to work in colored pencil, but when I took out my sets I was displeased with my options for pinks. They will definitely be used soon though. I am itching to work with color.

So far these sketches have all found homes, but I will probably end up running out of names from my postcard-art form. If you haven't already and are interested, please drop me an address for a random small piece of art.

Daily Sketch Invitation

A call went out last week on my social media inquiring if anyone would be interested in having a daily sketch project. I leaped at the idea. If you have any interest in joining in as well, we are using the hashtag #dailysketch. No complicated rules: just sketch, share, and support each other's work.

permanent marker on cardstock

I need to do a cleaner scan of my first two days' sketches, but the clean line of today's drawing picked up well. I was going to say that I was not sure why I don't do more line drawing, but that isn't entirely true. A good line drawing can be deceptively challenging, and the lure of getting caught up in detail work is strong. This one just wanted to happen though and flowed without thought. Bunny!