Photos and Drawing

I have finally made some time to take some photos from the back porch during this gray and rainy day.

Our crabapple appears to be preparing for a grand show, this year.  Year before last, she was dressed like a victorian bride.  Last year, she had approximately four blooms.  Any day now, she will be in glorious full bloom.

Our maples are doing their thing, too.  Such beautiful colors!

I am getting in some drawing practice while I am making some hardboard painting panels and waiting for the oil ground that I will put on them before using them for oil painting.  I bought a 4×8 sheet of tempered hardboard at Lowe’s and they cut it into 21 panels for me:  18 12×16’s and 3 16×24’s.  All for $8.00!  To get that many from the art supply store would have been about $50-$60.  I had to buy gesso and oil ground, but still it works out to be much cheaper and I have a stack of panels.  Yay!  I am going to cover some of them in “canvas”.  I am actually using muslin fabric.  I will also try some osnaberg (sp?) and see how that works.  I think it is very nifty making my own canvases.  It is a process, though.  I am putting two layers of acrylic gesso, letting them dry for a couple of days, then I will apply two coats of oil ground and let that dry for about a week, then sand lightly with fine sandpaper and hopefully they will be ready.  This is a simpler process than some people do, but this is my first try at it.  I want to keep it as simple as possible.  We will see…

Anyway, here is some of my drawing practice:

Can you guess what is next?  Right!  Mouths!  LOL!

I bought an ebook by one of the artists that is inspiring me right now:  Cuong Nguyen.  His drawing lesson book.  You need to know how to draw to do art, especially portraits, but pretty much anything.  So, if you are an artist, new or experienced, you should be practicing your drawing whenever you get a chance.

What am I reading?  Well, I finished the book on George Washington a while back.  It was very good.  The author revealed a little bit of an agenda, but otherwise it was very good.  I enjoyed it and cried when Washington died and then, again, when Martha died.

Since then, I have read a collection of Louis L’Amour short stories and several other books, but don’t remember them all right off hand.  I am in the process, right now, of reading The Westminster Confession of Faith for Study Classes by G. I. Williamson, O! Pioneers by Willa Cather, and Love, Lucy, An Autobiography by Lucille Ball.

The countenance is the portrait of the soul, and the eyes mark its intentions.

— Cicero