One last October ink sketch, loosely following an example from the library book “Pen & Ink Techniques” by Frank Lohan — I drew the tree directly in ink, letting the pen move a bit intuitively across the page. But you can still see faint pencil lines under the text that I didn’t bother to erase.
. . . sketched without any pre-planning. Today I was busy baking a birthday cake for Bill (his birthday is tomorrow), and gave no thought to doing a daily ink sketch. Until remembering this evening that I still have 2 more days of this self-imposed challenge.
So I drew the first thing I saw.
My mother always made red velvet cake with an old-fashioned boiled milk frosting, also known as ermine frosting, so that’s how I used to do it. But Bill grew up with a cream cheese frosting, and now our daughter says that’s the correct topping for red velvet. So I did it their way.
My month of simple daily ink-only sketches is almost over, and I am ready to play with color again! Today, I was entering a deposit in my checkbook, took a look at the pen in my hand, and used it to draw my hand on the spur of the moment.
A few weeks ago we had our trees trimmed. Apparently a few small branches were left up in the live oaks — today’s high winds blew them down. I picked a few up to throw on th3 burn pile, but stopped to sketch this.
Part of the fun of post-cancer: regular CT scans to make sure it stays gone. With contrast dye. Which means a whole lot of drinking . . .
(Not complaining! I’m thankful to be healthy again!)
Today’s ink sketch was done from a photograph I took early last month when temperatures were still over 90°. This rescue horse living next door has a very white face; the fly mask is for protection from UV rays. The mask is no longer needed with our cooler days in the 70s, but the large horses have been moved away to a different area.
There was a wire fence separating my corgi and the horse but I chose to not draw it in. Whenever this particular horse saw her out in the pasture, he would run over just to be near her. He would calmly nibble the grass while she sniffed around. Maybe picking up on the gophers’ and moles’ gossip.
In our part of Texas, we don’t see much falling leaves in the autumn. Even many oak trees tend to hang on to their green leaves until springtime. But today a thunderstorm blew through with high winds, leaving broken leaf tips everywhere.
