My hairdresser loves me. I bet.

Meet Emily

Last night in my drawing class we got to meet Emily.  She was our model for the evening.

We practiced all kinds of drawing - broad stroke gestures, circles and tubes, contour (even blind contour but that one looks like a drunken monkey drew it so I didn't bother including it here).

We drew the circles and tubes, then went back in to do gesture sketching, and then finally drew the negative space around Emily's body, which helped me to see where I'd gone wrong and correct a couple of things.

Uh, except for this one, where I went way off track because the classroom discussion got really interesting and I lost my focus.  One person was telling a story about how her brother-in-law planted his own marijuana in the backyard and his mom (an older, staunch Catholic lady) was super-impressed with his gardening skills and even helped him water it, all while having no idea what she was helping him grow.  I was pretty entertained by the whole idea, and forgot to watch what I was doing there for a minute.

I think this one is my favourite of the night.  I know I didn't finish the black before the time was up but I got all the pencil lines in that I wanted to, and I love her head and shoulder.

I love the shadow on the left side of her body in this one.  It really makes her body look 3D.  (Note to self: put that little trick away to use again sometime.)

All of these drawings are conte on newsprint.  They're on an 18"x24" pad of paper, so they are WAY larger than they look here.

She has a weird shoulder in this one but I like how her right hand turned out.  The teacher said people usually avoid drawing hands, feet and faces because they're "hard".  Oh yeah??  CHALLENGE ACCEPTED.

By the end of the evening we were doing 20 minute poses.  These last two have shadows, midtones and highlights.  I think they're pretty cool!

Turns out though, that even 20 minutes isn't very long to draw a person.  I really didn't get a chance to work on faces at all.  BUT!!  We have a model again next week, so I'll get to warm up the conte crayons and do this all over again.

BEST.  CLASS.  EVER.  

I hope you're all having as much fun as I am. 

Love Shelley!

These are the people in your neighbourhood

So last night I dropped my kids off at the middle school for a safety and first aid training program, and then went for a little drive around town to find something to draw.  There are lots of beautiful new homes in the area that I would love to sketch but I thought it might look a little creepy to sit outside someone's house and stare at it for an hour.  I ended up picking a quiet spot in the hotel parking lot and I found a car to draw.

Working on my lap with the steering wheel partly in the way probably didn't help any, but I persevered.  (Heroically.)

But then it got cold and dark so I packed it in.  (Not as heroically.)  I probably could have put another half hour into it and made it better, but it was just for practice. But blah blah blah.  Want to see it?

I picked up the kids and went home.  Then this morning I was flipping through the workbook they used last night and saw this:

Question: List another danger that you might find around your home or in your neighbourhood in the winter.

His answer: Avalanche.

AVALANCHE.  In THIS neighbourhood.  (sigh)  I guess he won't be getting into the gifted program after all.

HAHAHAHAHHAHAHAAAAAAAA!

Ahhh, I gotta go.  Keep your feet on the ground!

Love Shelley

Lightbulb Moment

"I'd love to hang around a guy like Tony Stark or even Robert Downey Junior. No romantic stuff* but just to be around that kind of brash energy, fast-talking funny dialogue that's intelligent and actually makes you think. I'd love to be challenged by someone like this. Someone who is smart and confident and doesn't dumb it down for the people he's hanging around with, and in fact doesn't depend on feedback from anyone or validation, who just puts it all out there in a take-it-or-leave-it-I-don't-give-a-shit way.

You know what?  I don't want to HANG OUT with someone like that... I want to BE someone like that.

*unless he wants to, of course. : )"

As I was writing out my wish list of characteristics I'd love to have in a person-to-hang-around-with (friend or otherwise), I suddenly realized that I can actually BE that person.  And just entertain my own self.  HA!  My problem is that I keep a damper on a lot of what I say and do, lest I accidentally offend or allow someone to see me for real.  And that's fine when I'm talking to the principal at my kids' elementary school... but that's about it.

I'd still love a friend like this - how much fun would that be?!  But I think maybe instead of looking out there, I'm going to look right over here.  At me.  Time to let the cat out of the bag.

Look out... it's on.

Love Shelley!

Oh, the fury

I know this journal page probably looks all happy and cheery but really I was in the grip of a horrible rage when the writing just flooded out of me.  (That's why I blurred it all out, for your own safety.)  (Please note the high-school-like use of repeating 8s to blur it out.  I never said I was mature.)

Other than the ugly feelings that spilled out, I really like this page!  It's a fold-out in my journal and I'm especially partial to the "June" tab.  And of course the bright colours.  Even when I'm thoroughly pissed off, I still have that magpie eye for radiant, lively colours.

The megaphone was just clipped out of a magazine, and the rest is ink, gesso, stencils and stamps, with some washi tape for good measure.  You just can't go wrong with washi tape.

Today though: it's gonna be a shiny happy day.  Just watch me go.

Love Shelley!

I'm working on something...

But it's not done yet.  So here... this made me laugh and I'm all about having a good laugh.

I'm pretty sure I meant to ask my sister something important, but as usual our conversation immediately devolved into complete nonsense:

 

*sigh*

So when you see me furiously texting my sister, please don't think we're solving the world's problems, or even saying actual sentences.  You now know the disappointing truth.  I... I hope we can still be friends.

Love Shelley!

Treasure

Don't you just want to run your fingers over them? 

The kids didn't have school on Friday so we picked up my mom and went gallivanting.  Among other adventures, we ended up at an antique store just outside of town.

Vintage type, in a mint-condition type tray.  Which he also wouldn't sell me.

Anyway, right inside the door was this tray of PURE GOLD.  I started to drool immediately.  He wanted a buck apiece for the bits of type, so I picked up a few.  I tried to get him to sell me the whole tray, but he said nope.  I think he figured he'd make more cash selling the pieces individually.  Rats.

There's a little dog at the shop named Zoey that comes to visit all the newcomers, and Zoey was pretty interested in my runners for some reason.  Then I remembered that we had done our chickens the weekend before, and that was probably what she was smelling.

Which made me think of this text exchange with my sister:

 

Don't worry, it was all very humane, there was no shooting or dancing... but the bottom line is that we have a freezerful of delicious chickens.  AND now that all the aggressive roosters are gone (except Henry, of course, he's a sweetheart) the hens are starting to lay the most beautiful little brown eggs.  I guess they were a little stressed out with being harassed all the time.  Now that they can settle down, the egg production should go way up.  And since we didn't make our fences high enough, they all pretty much fly over it and make use of our entire yard (not to mention free-rangin' it in the neighbour's garden).  Luckily they all still come home at night.  But wow... you should taste these eggs, they are UNBELIEVABLE.  Can't wait till we're getting a dozen a day and we can eat our fill.  YUM.

Pretty, and tasty too!

That's all for today.  Gotta focus on actual WORK, which is cutting into my art time.  Ugh.  I might have to have a word with my boss about that.

Okay, get going!  I'm sure you have things to do too.

Love Shelley!