Sketch With Me: challenge

This past weekend was the monthly virtual sketch crawl with the Sketch With Me group, and this month’s prompt was “challenge”. The challenge of a hard subject, a new medium, etc.

For me lately, the real challenge is taking time to sketch at all! With Bill’s ongoing dentist appointments, my periodontal appointments, our going through stuff to get rid of anything we don’t wish to move (if we haven’t used it in 5 years, why keep it?), meeting with the realtor to sell the cabin, taking time for get-togethers with our kids in Pflugerville, Needville, and Houston . . .

In fact, getting photos for the realtor proved to be my biggest challenge this weekend! The company’s photographer came out to take photos — and they turned out horribly! So dark and depressing, I sure wouldn’t want to look at the property as she captured it! She’s young; perhaps it is just a summer job for her. I admit taking photos of a small space in a dark log cabin can be challenging, but I knew we could do better. After all, it was a great bunch of photos that made Bill and me consider buying the cabin in the first place — and we have improved it since then!

So our daughter came out to stage the furnishings better and take new photos. And what a difference they were! It’s good to take time for sun or cloudiness to get the right outdoor shots, and get the right angle to enhance a space rather than making it seem to close in on itself! Our cabin, though built of darkly painted logs, is really quite a sunny place with lots of gorgeous views of trees.

I gave the new photos to our realtor to replace the first ones online but ran into another glitch: Kristen’s camera resolution was too high, creating files too large to upload. So, with our son Jason’s help, I now have the correct pixel size and hope the new photos will be posted later today.

Leaving very little sketching time. But ever since we moved in 5 1/2 years ago, I have wanted to draw this view of our loft from the steep stair-ladder made of half-logs, looking upwards to the peaked roof log beams. That’s my great-grandmother’s quilt hanging over the right railing. At first I thought I’d just paint it and leave the heavy logs with the white bead board in between them in ink only. But now I’m not so sure . . . Should I paint the logs as well?