A few tomato seedlings came up in my worm bin after I had thrown some tomatoes out. I transplanted the little seedlings and months later, I have huge plants dripping with plump, luscious tomatoes, fertilized with my vermicompost, of course. One of the plants produced yellow tomatoes! I love when I get free stuff like this! (Transparent watercolor on Arches, cold press, 140lb.)
Felt like a quick sketch tonight, nothing planned, nothing serious. Just an ordinary pair of socks on the floor ...
Ah, I've missed the smell of a newly sharpened pencil! It felt so good to have a pencil in my hand the past couple days! Drawing this plant from my front yard has done wonders for my spirit and disposition. Goodness knows what the name is tho' ... but I'm pretty sure it is in the spurge family (Euphorbiaceae). In times like this, a botany degree comes in handy. It's good to be back folks! I look forward to continuing and completing my 21-day creative drawing challenge!
I am excitedly awaiting tomorrow's dinner of fish tacos with green, yellow, and red peppers. I figured I better draw them before they are no more. :)
I visited this church on the island of Andros, Greece in 1994. I distinctly remember walking down this path and looking back to see this white church against a perfectly blue sky and thinking that it looked so unreal beautiful, like a watercolor. The architectural features in shadows are what tempted me to paint this from my photos after 13 years.
Post-post post (heh): PLEASE feel free to give me critical feedback. I wasn't going to post this for various reasons ... but figured I learn by creating and maybe the next one won't be so muddied and I won't try so hard to force transparent watercolors to do what they really don't want to do. Really, I value critiques immensely. :)
Sometimes, a person needs color to brighten up a rather gloomy and rainy day. So I busted out my watercolors this morning to paint a cup of Japanese green tea and cookies. Admittedly, this was painted from a photo `cuz the cookies have long been eaten (so de-lish!). If you would like to know what kind they are, I drew the package here. The colors are a little more intense than the original but I quite like the result.
My lesson today is to trust my eyes. I drew out the general outlines in pencil initially and was quite pleased with the shapes. Then just before finishing, I changed the shape of the lip of the china cup `cuz it looked wonky ... only to find out that it was fine ... and it ended up misshapen! Ack! I'm learning ...
I went to the grocery store last week and for some reason, the store sold out its eggs! I mean, how does a grocery store run out of eggs? So, this week, I visited again and found a carton of these beautiful local, fresh eggs. I knew I just had to draw them. I tried out a new charcoal pencil (Prismacolor, soft) and combined it with some graphite and used some blending techniques described by J.D. Hillberry in his book, "Drawing realistic textures in pencil." If you love graphite like I do, you must check out J.D. Hillberry's web site!
Mamo means yellow in Hawaiian and is also the name of an extinct black forest bird. Mamo is also my cat that has yellow eyes.
What started out as a doodle, ended up being quite an involved drawing. I guess such is the nature of things when drawing fur as Juj ("Hey Juj"; formerly "Everything is Contextual") can probably attest. She is the mistress of fur in my book. Check out this post.
Tonight, I got lost in this drawing. I used my Pigma Micron 005 so it took a little longer than usual but it was a nice distraction. I might work on it some more later but I'll stop for now.
Another quick sketch of my other pair of boots. If I were to draw a pair of work boots daily, I would have enough sketches for a week and a half!
I'm not much of a gym person but I am a hiker and admittedly, this is my favorite form of exercise.
Some misc. drawings from my trip to North Carolina. It is such a beautiful state of so many wonderfully warm people! The shrimp boat was parked across the house where we stayed. Being next to the ocean, we were treated with gorgeous sunsets and watched these boats meander the canal every morning and night.
Children are the coolest beings. Their sense of wonder and excitement over the smallest things is fascinating to me. Here, a friend's son is watching his sister dig a hole in utter fascination. lol.
A beautiful bracelet I bought yesterday from Pam. Gorgeous crystals and silver butterflies! I love it!
This is my first new piece of furniture ... to be eventually accompanied by a couch and equally cool standing lamp.
It's brown and accentuates the color of my eyes when I sit on it. :) Can you tell I love it?
Today, at work, I mentioned my blog to the office staff and was told that they would be looking out for a new post tomorrow. Talk about pressure! So, I decided to draw my set of keys, complete with my office set, which comprises the bulk of the weight I carry around everyday.
I had some time yesterday afternoon so I drove around Oahu and stopped at this beach somewhere between Laie and Hauula. Took out my goza mat, lay on the beach under some shade, and was asleep in no time. I woke up to the sound of the ocean and laughing children.
Hehe, this is my somewhat organized chaos of a desk. It's a quick sketch that I did with a sharpie that was lying around. It was a lot of fun ... much less agonizing than a self portrait and about as much fun as making the mess in the first place!
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