toning it down

Lately I have been wanting to get back to drawing in ink only or monotone sketches. So I put together this monotone palette — plus an extreme limited palette in 4 mini-pans copied from Róisín Cure. Now, what type of subject shall I draw?

Stubby

One of our outdoor cats, Stubby, was a feral rescue adopted as a barn cat to help with rodents. But she had other ideas: she quickly adopted Bill as her designated human and became his “shop cat”. She often joins him as he drinks his morning coffee out on the back patio. And yes, her head really is that tiny!

recent raccoons’ mischief

Our visiting raccoons have been at it again! We used to store birdseed in a 10-gallon crock but they could easily get the wooden lid aside enough to dive in for a snack. The seed is now stored in an antique milk can. They couldn’t get the lid off — so they knocked the can over, rolling it off the porch and into the yard. (The lid stayed firmly in place!)

 

no watermelon here

This bowl was full of cut up bits of the best watermelon ever! I thought about sketching it — but couldn’t resist eating it instead. So I drew the empty bowl.

Drawn directly in brown ink with a continuous contour line.

a bit of “stained glass”

Back in 2006 I was a member of a small group we called The Riverside Watercolor Society (or the RWS). That is actually where I was first introduced to watercolor outside of grade school Prang sets. We were an informal group led by artist John Locke, and would each paint the same chosen subject in our own styles — it was great fun and a great learning experience!

One of the members, Mary Jane Rogers, did some really lovely work using Van Gogh watercolors and I’d always wanted to try them. So when my new Travel & Sketch palette came prefilled with an assortment of Van Gogh paints I got my chance. The best way to try new paints is to do a color mixing chart.

I have to say the handmade 100% cotton paper in this sketchbook with its uneven sizing is not the best paper to test watercolor on. But I noticed right away that, though the paints are richly pigmented, they lack the transparency of my usual watercolors (Daniel Smith and Winsor & Newton). Their quality is between student grade and professional grade. Maybe not for serious watercolors but fine for adding color to sketches.

This card was painted by Mary at one of the RWS meet-ups. We each painted our own designs, made prints, then put them together as Christmas cards. I saved at least one from each member.

a bit of Kansas

Sketched from a photo I took last December, we saw this sunset view during a drive from Manhattan, Kansas to Wichita.

chemo redone

Yesterday found us at M. D. Anderson at my new oncologist’s office (which was located in the Bluebonnet Suite — gotta love that!). My previous treatments were at Baylor, Scott, and White but after my bad reactions, we switch to MDA. 

Results from last week’s PET-scan showed that with only 2 chemo treatments the tumor has shrunk to half its former size. I received a new chemo treatment (same drugs but slower infusion and the second drug being given over 46 hours through a pump instead of orally). Very good news: no negative reactions!

takin’ a wee walk

While in the hospital, they failed to have PT staff work with me and were too short-handed to help me get out of bed to walk. As a result, when I was released I could not even stand up, let alone walk. That’s why I was sent to a rehab nursing home for a few weeks — to relearn how to stand up and how to walk. Now I’m home and still using this walker sometimes, but I’m also walking some on my own. We ate out yesterday and I walked into the restaurant on Bill’s arm without the walker entirely!

Our daughter-in-law Carrie sewed the bag hanging by Velcro straps on the front — first to use on the arm of my wheelchair, then moved over to the walker. Handy for carrying books, art supplies, an iPad, and even a snack.

new toys

I have a new addition to my collection: the Travel & Sketch palette from Traveler’s Notebook. I was really wanting this one in the larger folio size, but I was in the hospital when the first sale was offered (it sold out in 10 minutes!) and they did not offer the folio in the later sale. So I got this regular pocket palette that came filled with the versatile Explore Palette Plus Van Gogh watercolors. I replaced the 3 extra pans that came in it with 2 square mixing pans and reordered the paints in my normal pattern. The matching Spiral Ring Notebook was bought separately.

farmer’s market strawberries

Whenever we go to Di Iorio’s farmers market in Hempstead and get a sweet unmistakable fragrance in the air that draws us to the center aisle, we know that fresh strawberries are in. And that we must buy them!

Lately their fresh locally grown watermelon has been just as delectable.

After watching a recent YouTube video from Art Toolkit featuring April Wu of Traveler’s Company USA, I was inspired to rearrange my Folio palette in this new way. It holds the 20 watercolors I use the most set in a “rainbow spectrum” around a mixing pan, plus two other mixing pans. Just for fun, I placed some tiny colored pencils in the kit along with their sharpener and eraser.

a kolache sort of day

Today we drove to Brenham where I had a regular appointment with my eye doctor. On the way we stopped at the Chappell Hill Bakery for breakfast — I had a bacon, egg, and cheese kolache which was great, as always.

This is my latest purse-sized mini sketchbook (2” square), purchased several years ago on Etsy but unused until now. The craftsmanship is so exquisite that I didn’t want to “mess it up” so it has stayed on the shelf. Until now.

Kristen’s eggplant

Before I ended up in the hospital, our daughter Kristen had brought me some of her eggplant harvest to sketch . . . . . Better late than never!

home at the farm

Yesterday I was released from the rehab center to continue PT / OT with Home Healthcare. But while I was still there Bill, knowing how much I missed our wee place in the country, kept sending me photos from home, a few of them I sketched on this page.

Several weeks ago a raccoon decided to have a nighttime meet & greet with us on our front porch. He also raided our birdseed container. This past week, he invited his family to join him. This past spring we had two newly planted apple trees literally packed with apples — and then one day they were not. We suspect these bandits of the theft as there were no cores or other debris that deer would leave. We think the raccoons took them to store in their larder somewhere.

Our feral cat Egret (named for imitating the white egrets that perch on fence posts and hang around cattle — she hangs around our cow, Sierra) seems to think she is a miniature goat. She is often seen sitting with them on their wooden platform, sometimes on top of one. We’ve even seen her giving a goat a back message!