Beautiful evening in the garden

Our garden is usually full of weeds and in need pruning. It still is but not as bad as usual and, with the help of one of my sketching friends who designed plantings for a neglected bed, it's been a very pleasant place to spend these warm evenings.

8" x 10" two page spread in sketchbook

The weather has been so gloomy until recently that I'm really soaking up the sun, now that it's here. I can hardly stop staring at the blue sky.

It is a challenge for me to make graphic sense out of all this foliage. I need a few man made objects to focus on.

May Flowers

Dog sketches - Miki

Over recent months, I've ended up with a collection of sketches of our new dog, Miki. Miki is a really interesting looking little guy that we think may be part Chihuahua and Shibu Inu. He's not as small as a Chihuahua but he has those buggy eyes. His ears are really large so that sometimes, he looks like an arctic fox. He's a rescue dog and was listed as an American Eskimo mix. We looked up Inuit words and decided to call him miki, which, according to the internet, means small ice flow.




When he's awake, he doesn't stay still for very long, so I have to have several sketches going at the same time, hoping that he'll return to a pose I've already started to sketch.

It's easier to draw him while he's sleeping, but, of course, he usually settles into the same sleeping pose, so I end up with a lot of very similar compositions.

Apple

Pepper

Still Life with Telephone and Scanner

Early Morning Garbage Truck

On an early morning walk, I came across our local Waste Removal crew stopping for coffee at 7 Eleven.

Osa

This is our very sweet dog Osa. She's such a good dog that she actually sat for this drawing. I had to talk to her constantly but she patiently sat for about 15 minutes for me to get most of this down.

Osa was rescued from some kind of terrible farm/puppy mill where most of the animals were neglected. Some had died. She was taken better care of, apparently, because she was a breeding female. She had 2 litters before she was 2 years old, which is how old she was when we got her. She was underweight and her coat was raggedy and the slightest noise or unexpected movement would send her flying, at first. She rarely left my side.

We've always had dogs and they've always been good dogs (except Cooper, but that's another story), but Osa takes the cake on goodness. She learns quickly and has always been very obedient. It took about 3 or 4 years to coax her out of her shell but she has blossomed into a great companion. I can't believe she's 7 years old already.

Dining Room Chairs

I often sit down before or just after dinner to sketch something around the house.

I've just started a new sketchbook made from Twinrocker handmade paper. The first half of the book is White Cotton Rag hot press. It's a little bit hard to get wet but it's somewhat hard surface keeps the paint brilliance and it holds up really well under abuse.

Rainy day reading

It rained off and on and off and on all weekend, in fact all week. I was planning on going out to draw but worked around the house instead. It was a great day for laying by the window with a book. Listening to Bill Frisell - good rainy day music.

Velvet Chair

I saw somewhere that another artist had made a sketchbook with Rives BFK paper, so I included some in my current sketchbook, since I happened to have some on hand. It's a printmaking paper and has a soft surface. When it's wet, it gets kind of fuzzy. This is good for intaglio but not so great for ink and watercolor. The drawings come out softer and more diffused looking, which is a nice change, but I don't think I'll use it again.