A pitcher as vase for a tall bunch of alstroemeria on the end table. Two glasses, an ashtray, and a notebook there as well. My colors are upstairs and this is downstairs, or I would want to show the deep brownish purple of the blossoms against the light ochre color of the painting behind them.
Because this double-roll tape dispenser is so large and heavy, it is rarely misplaced for long. Built for the ages of gray-coated metal, with layers of ancient tape on the front face like some Scotch palimpsest.
Hand and shadow and this drawing fills the third moleskine notebook. When I began, I couldn't even imagine filling one notebook. Here I am, 121 days later, with a habit of drawing or painting every day, no matter the hour or frame of mind (late and good, in tonight's case).
Table napkin: after dinner mapping - geography in cloth.
My daughter picked me some dandelions. Some of the stems are even longer than two inches. (Don't you remember picking flowers and having some older person remind you, "Pick them with LONG stems"?) These wilted quickly, as dandelions do, but were a cheerful reminder of spring while they lasted.
This origami cube was made by a friend. It had a loop of thread at one point, and hung from a bit of metal trim on a standing lamp in the living room. The thread must have broken, for the cube disappeared, and only reappeared recently - slightly bent and dusty, but still beautiful.
Japanese mask - a joyful new face in our house.
The head of a Southern Greater Kudu, (Tragelaphus strepsiceros), South Africa, in the Carnegie Museum Discovery Room this afternoon.
Lemon on a placemat. I was drawing in the dining room while a riotous 4+ hour game of Monopoly resounded through the house from the living room. Grandparents and grandchildren finally abandoned the game for sleep - to be resumed sometime in the morning.
Puppet hands - a present brought to me from Myanmar (formerly Burma). I love hands and models of hands. These are carved of wood, each about three inches long.
Up too late last night to post this, so here it is the next morning: one green apple. A Granny Smith, I think. For lunch I like Pink Ladies better, but the grocer was out of those, or maybe their season is done.
T
hes
e are my e
yeglasses on the
table beside my chair now.
Four hands around the page. The text reads (clockwise): Stop now? No, look over there. Have patience. And hang on.
I can always find new ways to look at my hand. The process feels different every time.
Listening to the radio while I drew this arrangement of two flowers and newspaper on the table in the back yard.
Note to self: if flowers have longish stems, make sure not to draw the vase too close to the center of the page -- you'll either wind up with most of your still life happening beyond the page's edge or you'll be rearranging things mid-sketch.
Same two apples. Same bowl. Next day.
Apples in a hand-made bowl. Tonight lines and spaces were what I wanted to think about. I listened to the clock as I drew. Everyone else is asleep. The house is so quiet I can hear my pen on the page.
A tangled branch of thyme from in front of the house waits in the kitchen, almost forgotten. Still smells, and tastes, of the outdoors. I love the intense piney burst behind my teeth, especially when I might have given up and thrown it away.
When I was little, we would pick the thyme that grew at the base of the stone seat near my grandparents' house and twist it into bracelets.
One amethyst earring... imagine the other one... imagine how purple it is.
Late night - playing with contour and color on my left foot.
Narcissus 'Thalia' opened today in the backyard - sometime between two and five.
I know this because I was out in the yard this afternoon, puttering around with weeding and pruning and the beginnings of spring clean-up. I remember noticing the buds. When I sat down to draw, one of them had opened. Thalia is a delicate daffodil, with multiple blossoms opening on one stem.
I now see what people have been saying about watercolor beading up on the moleskine sketchbook pages. Usually I work with watercolor crayon, and that goes on smoothly, either with a wet brush touched to a crayon tip or with wet brush over applied dry crayon. Today I had left my crayons inside and had a set of gouache with me instead. Very hard to get the color to go down smoothly. Finally decided to just treat it as an effect and work with it.
A tiny accordion book with nothing in it (yet.) Forty folded pages, about 2.5 inches square. I don't know what I'm going to do with it, but it was fun to make, and I'm sure I'll think of something.
Friday nights are pretty quiet at my house.
From the front yard - first blooms of yellow daffodils opened in yesterday's heat.
Today also marks my 100th day of making daily drawings. I'm going to celebrate by getting a larger set of watercolor crayons. I've had good luck with my set of ten - they blend and mix well, so I'm ready to see what it is like in the world beyond primary colors. Going to treat myself to the set of 40. Can't wait.
Hand closed with floating circles. Why circles? Because I had fun with rectangles yesterday and wanted to play with color outside the lines again. I also liked the thought of the circles escaping.
Playing with non-representational colors and shapes here, over a contour drawing of my right hand.
Sleepily drawing thread and shadows. Sleep which knits the ravelled sleeve... still adjusting to the time change, here.
White chrysanthemum on the dining room table. One of three. (I'm obsessive, but not that obsessive.)
"Night's candles are burnt out," I wrote, after staying up w-a-y too late after dinner to draw and paint this.
I bought this pepper to roast tomorrow, so I wanted to commemorate its shape tonight.
