early morning view

The past few years I have reversed my long-held habits and have become an early riser, usually while it’s still quite dark. A quiet time to sip a cup of hot tea, read, or play a word game on my phone. Our corgi, Butters, and one of our cats, Bardie, love to go explore outside in the morning before it gets light. This is the view we had one morning last week, a wee sliver of a moon over the Arizona cypress tree we planted a few years ago.

The teacup and saucer are the only real cup and saucer I own; I normally use a large mug. I don’t usually use tea bags, but I bought a gift tin of Yorkshire Gold tea bags just for the tin, which features ink drawings by Yorkshire artist John Harrison. The bags have no string and tag; instead, I use a beaded chain with a small clip to hold the corner of the bag.

(watercolor, gouache, and colored pencil in a Seawhite of Brighton travel journal)

✳️ A bit of artistic license was employed in this sketch: the oak tree, which still has some brown leaves hanging on, was moved closer to the cypress to fit the square format and the crepe myrtle we planted was completely ignored. Those pine trees in the far distance are actually much taller than I drew them, and I left out the long driveway with its 12 live oaks and some additional fencing. Trying to simplify!

my Monday, SRO

Just a quick scribble sketch done while waiting through early jury selection process . . . All seats were taken, all hallways filled, standing room only.

We are now on lunch break; I live too far from the county seat to go home so I’m eating a snack in my car and posting this until time to return to the courtroom.

So much fun. (Not!)
 

brotherly mushrooms

These two small mushrooms were seen while Butters and I walked the front pasture — the smaller one seemed to lean into the larger one as if seeking its protection.

(watercolor and colored pencil)

mending time

Time to tackle the small pile of mending that’s collected on my dresser. Which means, time to procrastinate and draw it first. 😂

I was wanting to use the large blue tote bag for Bill’s hospital visits last year (there’s always something extra to stash in my bag) but what I thought was leather straps when I made the bag were not — and they were splitting apart. Real leather straps were hard to find; many were on Etsy but shipped from Eastern Europe or Asia. So I set it aside and ordered the green bag on Etsy (the actual color is an earthy deep forest) which is also bigger than I normally carry.

The green bag has just the right type of pockets, but one inside side pocket tended to gap so I thought a snap might help. And of course, as soon as I ordered it, I found real leather straps to replace those on the knit bag!

early morning walk

Our temperatures are still mostly in the 70s but mornings have been foggy. This is the view during a recent morning walk.

I need practice trying to write with a tiny paintbrush. Very wonky!

distractions

Yes, I love to sketch. I love playing with fountain pens, watercolor, gouache, and pencils. But there are many distractions — many are simply the stuff of normal daily life and some are a bit more intense. 

Routine tests last summer in preparation for back surgery showed that my husband had only one kidney . . . and things weren’t working properly. He’s had to be on a catheter since then, through a successful back surgery. There was a surgical fix for his prostrate but, for that, we switched to a different hospital. The surgeon placed him “top priority” on the list due to having only one kidney and being on a catheter. There was still a glitch or two, but thankfully the surgery, performed New Year’s Eve, was a success and the catheter is gone.

I planned on sketching in waiting rooms and his hospital room, carrying tools and sketchbook with me. But somehow, I just couldn’t focus. I _did_ manage to begin knitting a top though. And even sketching the early results, though the body of the top is curling at this stage.

For this sketch, I lightly drew the shapes with colored pencil, then painted with gouache. A thin ball point pen was used for the knitting needle’s cable, and a bit of colored pencil was added on top.

eating out

Today we ate at Gabby’s in Field Store — great food and we were both too lazy to cook. I did some very quick sketching while waiting for our orders.

This 2” sketchbook lives in my purse, which means it seldom comes out to play. In fact the first page was sketched 2 1/2 years ago! I’m such a stay-at-home hermit . . .

Except when camping, which requires bigger sketchbooks and more tools.

just because . . .

Technically, this small sketchbook is for nature or botanical sketches. But sometimes I just want to play. Our daughter brought over a plate of goodies on one of her new dishes and I love the color and pattern. So I drew some of the design, slightly scrunched up to fit a rectangular spread instead of a round plate.

— fountain pen, pencil and gouache —

Merry Christmas!

I hope y’all are having a lovely and blessed Christmas! Today I did a quick ink & wash sketch between baking tasks. We saw this truck at our veterinarian’s when we took the wee beasties in for nail trims; I snapped a quick photo to sketch from later.

(Yes, the tree top was really tilted like this.)

Ink, watercolor, and gouache in a 140mm square Seawhite travel journal.

something different

Last week Bill took our corgi, Butters, outside to play ball. Across the yard and driveway, he saw this Great Egret over by the swimming pool. Not wishing to startle it, he took a quick photo from where he stood — a very distant, out-of-focus photo. 

I’ve been wanting to try less “representational” sketching anyway, so I painted this page using that fuzzy photo as a basis. Mostly granulating watercolors with some gouache patterning added on top. Not quite as I expected it to turn out, but an interesting direction to take my sketching while still capturing daily memories.