Art Spirals

Today my Mother in Law and I went on a tour of five cactus gardens, hosted by the local rock garden/cactus club. Several of them were phenomenal, including the one in Kern Place. When we pulled up to the house, I realized I had sketched the house in the past several months, and happened to have that sketchbook along with me. I haven't had as much sketch time recently, so it's still in my car, waiting to be filled up!

So I took it over to show the owner. What a neat thing! It made our garden tour more special, and I got to see that inside the garden gate is even more lovely than outside it! So I don't believe I shared this with you all, and since I scanned it to email her, I'll post it here:

From Drawing 2008

Inside her garden she also has a dead fruit tree -- but hers is upright and used to hang baskets of flowers and garden art on. Ours is upside down in one of the gardens and I use it to train up Lady Banks' rose vine with an orange bells bush inside the teepee of its branches.

From Drawing 2008

From Drawing 2008

The Cosmos pencil sketch was such fun to do, and an eyeopener. I used direction from this book Arnosky, Drawing from Nature that has wonderful illustrations and clear writing. The amazon link I've chosen has the jacket cover, so you can see how wonderful his illustrations are. He says: Look closely at the opened flowers and stil unopened buds. Then imagine how the flowers bloomed from the buds." First time I'd done that, and it was educational. I'll definitely approach flowers that way again.

More life drawing classes. Most poses are held 30 minutes, with a break in the middle. During the break, I usually try to change my angle and sketch the pose from that difference.

From Drawing 2008

From Drawing 2008

From Drawing 2008

and then these were from this week's class. I thought it was smart of the model to bring a book to read. I can't imagine holding still this long, if I were the model!

From Drawing 2008

From Drawing 2008

From Drawing 2008

In these I found that I made her torso too tall, in each of the three drawings, but I was able to "see" it, and correct it, so that made me happy. Part of the height difference is that her lower body is closer to me, so it'll be bigger in comparison to what's further back, that's perspective.

I've started taking life drawing lessons, and wow, I've learned so much in the two classes so far! it's exciting to learn how to break down figures (or trees, landscapes, etc.) into basic shapes, get the proportions right, and then refine. as I suspected, the skills learned apply to much more than just drawing people. And drawing people is not really what I'm interested in. I'm much more interested in closeups of nature, almost to the point of abstraction, and beautiful architecture. today is another class...can't wait! so here are some pics from last week:

From Drawing 2008

From Drawing 2008

From Drawing 2008

Here's my view of McDonald's, at least of their playground. I finally picked up my sketchbook again, after leaving it for over two months, and drew this view of one of my kid's shoes in the shoe cubby while she was at play.

I took a solo road trip with my kids this week. it was an adventure, a bit of a challenge since it was the first time I'd driven four hours with my kids by myself. I downloaded two Narnia books and they were a lifesaver. We were all fascinated with listening to them, and it kept the kids quiet. They drew and looked out of the window while they listened.

We went to a river and a lake to play, on two separate days, and I did quick sketches of them (they of course were in constant motion) so it was challenging, but I think i captured their likenesses in several of the sketches. Here they are:

From Drawing 2008

J at the river.

From Drawing 2008

L at the river

From Drawing 2008

Both of them. We saw boats being unloaded and loaded at the boat ramp, birds, insects, rocks, etc. etc. lots of good outdoor fun!

and hopefully doesn't end with a whimper! I was going strong there for a week or so, took a couple of days off, but i'll be back. Most of what I produced wasn't worth photographing...not sure these are either. HA. but here are the better sketches for the year so far...

Nuts is the EDM challenge for the first week of January. These are from nuts that my older daughter got from Santa, along with a nutcracker. One of two things she wanted from Santa...

Side of the hotel in Ruidoso, NM where we went up for a fun play in the snow. it had some interesting features to help its standard boring architecture.

first sketch of one of my favorite santas, a candle holder that shines out the light through the star holes of his head and clothes. This is the first time in awhile I tried sketching simple circles and ovals to get the shape and then made the lines more definite. amazing that it works to well to get things in proportion!

quick leaf sketches:

From Daily Drawing...

From Daily Drawing...

And pinecones, I keep plugging away at pinecones, trying not to get lost in the symmetry and design... it's tough!

From Daily Drawing...

A succulent in bloom on my patio. I have real trouble scanning pencil sketches, wonder what the key is to it?

From Daily Drawing...

And this last one is my little joke...no, we don't have polar bears here in El Paso! but it was a photo on a book at the book fair and there was a lull in the activities...

From Daily Drawing...

I haven't made the time to sketch every day, as I was in the beginning of the year, but here are the sketches I have been able to do this fall. In continuing with yesterday's theme, here's another piece of El Paso architecture. I had fifteen minutes between appointments and I drove around downtown looking for the right combination of a neat building AND a perfectly situated parking space to draw...it's the combination of the two that's hard to find! anyway, near where they are building the new federal courthouse, stands the Church of the Immaculate Conception , built in 1892, and the cupola on it is interesting to draw. So here's a fifteen minute sketch from my car:

From Daily Drawing...

When we were traveling through Socorro, NM, there's a lovely little bungalow in the heart of the town that I"m fascinated by. So whenever we're there, I try to drive by and see it. This was the first sketch I was able to do with the whole family in the car...the kids had enough to occupy themselves, as did my husband with whatever electronic gizmo he had brought, so I was able to get a sketch in. I only did enough of the detail to remember it, and took the photo too, I don't think my family would have been able to sit still while I sketched in every shingle and siding element!

Here's a photo of the house and then the sketch:

From Daily Drawing...

From Daily Drawing...

In Socorro, there's a fun restaurant/brewery and I sketched the open pizza kitchen from our table, again while kids chattered, colored, begged me to read Harry Potter no. 2, etc.

From Daily Drawing...

And then a pizza/restaurant closer to home, Ardovino's Desert Crossing, this is their outside pizza oven and outside door. This was a restaurant on the way to CA before the interstate came through, and it was featured in Life magazine, etc. I've heard the food is great and the setting is gorgeous, that I CAN attest to. Oh nuts, I didn't scan the pizza oven picture, but here's the door:

From Daily Drawing...

Here's a historic apartment building that I sketched earlier in the year. Today I had the wonderful opportunity to tour it and six other historic buildings in the Sunset Heights Historical District of El Paso. This is the area where people would sit on their front porches and watch the battles of the Mexican Revolution occuring on the other side of the Rio Grande. It was the first part of El Paso that had running water and a sewer system, as I learned at another house on the tour today. This apartment building is beautiful, loads of gorgeous details, hidden courtyards, I'm so glad I had a chance to go inside!

From Daily Drawing...

I took some liberties with the drawing, I omitted a huge cypress tree that is in front of the left window...the pictures inside the building showed how big the trees were when the building was newly built in 1917; the trees were barely taller than my daughters and now they are immense!

I also sketched a new building at UTEP that day

From Daily Drawing...

that features the university's distinctive Bhutanese architecture.