More Sketching and some stitching

This one was for the April Challenge in the watermedia forum at wetcanvas.com.  April showers bring May flowers was the challenge and there were a few photos to choose from.  Sketching slowly from a photograph makes it easy to get the image; I need to practice working from life.  I’ve been doing it once a week with some friends but we end of doing more visiting that sketching and once a week isn’t enough. 

It’s time to get back to doing something every day, even if it’s a small one.  This one was done as part of a page in my 12x9 Aquabee Sketch Book.  Here is the rest of the page

These were done over the weekend, images from wetcanvas again, the weekend drawing event.. 

I also did some stitching… color!  That’s what I am wanting to bring more of into my life.  So here is a bag and pencil case to hold my larger sketchbook and palette when I’m outdoors painting. The pieces are brighter than they looks here.  We have those horrid new lightbulbs which discolor everything.  The bag and pencil case are on a white countertop, not a yellow one.  And why did the white in the bag stay white – who knows.

Finally, some sketching done ….

                  

Over at wetcanvas.com there is a weekend drawing event in one of the forums.  The link will take you over there.  These are two sketches I did this weekend, Pepsi Please is from this weekend’s hostess.  

The tile roof is an image from a friend who also happens to be one of my favorite artists, Li Newton.  Li takes wonderful photos and there is always something I’m gonna want to paint when she hosts.  The piece above is one of those…. from a long ways back.  I don’t remember when and I can’t seem to find the photo but I had done the drawing, it’s cropped from a larger street scene in one of those exotic places she visits.

The event works like this -- whoever is hosting posts 15 photos, you pick one and do whatever you’re going to do with it.  The kicker is you need to post whatever you have done at the 2  hour mark.  I usually get so involved in thinking and doing that I forget to time myself. 

It felt good… both of these are done in my 12 x 9 Aquabee sketch book and I worked like I do when I’m painting en plein air. 

In The Works

This is a piece that has been hanging in my stitching space for a very long time waiting…. It’s a mixed media piece, a combination of painting ( the sunset,) transfer (the poem…I must go down to the see again….) and stitching it all together on fabric.  Last night I decided it is time to figure out how to finish it.  That’s my project for today.

Meanwhile, a couple other WIP’s (works in process) in my stitching space…. a couple small abstract wall quilts ….

The faces were inspired by something posted on Jude’s Spirit Cloth blog.  I want to embroider something on the brown strip on the top piece, on the lower piece I used a bleach pen to discharge the word create.

Reading what I just wrote about these makes me think… I need to clarify abstract.  I call these abstract because there is something that has been abstracted, the face.  If the face weren’t on the piece it would actually be non-representational art.  However, it seems to me that most folks call all of this type of work abstract so I,’m conflicted, should I call it what it is or what most folks recognize.