Stressful Days, Lots of Drawing

I am a nervous person riddled with panic attacks on a good day but this year has been more challenging than usual and I'm to the point where I feel like I may end up in a padded room before my 60th birthday in November. To try and bring some calm back into my psyche I've been drawing and playing around with watercolors as often as possible. My drawings show promise; the watercolors, not so much. Maybe it's because of my age and the fact that I grew up with a black and white TV but I do much better with gray scale than I do with color.


Charlie

This is Charlie, a former neighbors cat who decided he liked our place better. This is my second attempt at this drawing, the first one ending up in the trash. Charlie was a challenge and I probably should have picked something smaller and more manageable. By the time I got his head done I just wanted this drawing to end but a cat head floating in space doesn't have much appeal so I kept at it until I finally had a complete cat.

Seamus

Seamus was done for a friend of mine. I told her I would do a drawing of each of her two dogs for practice and out of the pics she sent me I really liked this one the best. It took me a little over a week to finish Seamus. I have to be careful when drawing with pencil that I don't re-injure my hand so I can only draw for short periods at a time. I think this is a good thing because it forces me to leave it alone for a several hours and when I come back to the drawing I can more easily see areas that need improvement.

As for the watercolors.......

Comments

Simple Watercolor Sketches

Sketching and painting from my photos hasn't been going well lately so after disgustedly throwing another one in the waste basket I decided to try sketching without any reference material. I figure I'm almost 60 years old so there should there be something floating around in my head that I can pull out. The first one I sketched was this Teddy bear sitting on a rug drinking a beer and eating snacks. I went to bed thoroughly bummed out after spending the evening trying to sketch an animal from one of my photos . While I was swearing I would never try this crazy stuff again I picked up my sketchpad to do who knows what. I had no reference photo and I wasn't interested in drawing a blob of fur from one of our two dogs who were already curled up in a ball and fast asleep. In around 15 minutes I had drawn this very simple Teddy bear and the following morning I added the watercolor which really made it pop. Is it perfect?...not by a long shot. Teddy looks lik

Wood Duck Nest Boxes

After talking about it for the last couple of years, we finally decided to order two wood duck nest boxes. Why didn't we do it sooner? These large nest boxes are no small feat to put up for anyone at any age but for two women, aged 59 and 65, it's a monumental task! UPS delivered two wood duck nest boxes UPS delivered the nest boxes on April 17th, and that morning we got out the post hole digger, an 8 foot 4x4 post and went to work. This one was erected on the edge of our pond.Thank goodness our property is usually a soggy mess in the spring as it made the job of digging a hole much easier. Gena and Keetie digging the hole for a nest box We put the second box up the following morning on the edge of the marsh and I've spent the last week lathering myself with arthritis cream and popping Tylenol and Aleve for sore hands, neck, back, etc. Was it worth it? Well, a certain male house sparrow is ecstatic we went to all this work just for hi

A Day in the Coop

I wrote this in a notebook while "babysitting" in the chicken coop on Friday 10/2/15. I'm sitting on the bottom roosting pole in the chicken coop surrounded by six curious, lively baby chicks and one cranky older hen that Robin calls "Godzilla." She's giving them the "evil eye" while scratching and digging in the bedding and tossing it around, trying to scare them. Today, they seem less frightened by her, although they are still wary and scatter if she approaches too close. They're trying to scratch in the shavings just like big chickens; some of them are even flapping up in an attempt to perch on the roosting poles. They're a little shaky, but they'll catch on. We've been watching the babies, trying to sort out individual personalities so we could give them names. Some of them were easy: Amelia Earhart--the blue Ameracauna who was trying to fly at the age of one day, and Maggie--the other blue Ameracauna, a real sweetie who k

Robin Arnold Art

Search This Blog