A painting!

It's been a long time, I know, but honestly- I've been busy with art-related stuff. For example, getting my patoot into a studio space of my own. Woot! In doing so, I haven't been into the workshop for figure drawing lately- so no new drawings. I am, however, working on a painting. Jellyfish. One of my favorite things to see at the aquarium.



-- Post From My iPhone

Fresh-baked.

-- Post From My iPhone

Faux Friday

Celebrating the long weekend by going to bed early tonight. Woo-hoo.
On the bright side, I finally made it to figure drawing again last night, and had a great evening of sketching. I went with plain charcoal pencils- one soft and one medium.



-- Post From My iPhone

Summer

Summer is trouble for me when it comes to get anything accomplished. There's too much going on, too much to see and do, blah blah blah... But I do finally have a couple more drawings (although I haven't been able to make it to the workshop in more than a week now... :-/ )






-- Post From My iPhone

Atomic Sketch

L and I went to an Atomic Sketch event at the Evil Olive last night, and for the first time, I sketched too. Two drawings- one I liked, one meh. But, I am so proud of myself for not freaking out and being unable to think of anything to draw. I know. Baby steps though. ;)
Anyway, here's the drawing I liked (I have a thing about rabbits- can you tell?):



-- Post From My iPhone

Lazy Saturday

This week was too busy. Haven't had a chance to do much more than a few doodles, what with travel for work and um... work itself.

Music-wise- we've been busy. My favorite show we saw recently had Russian Circles headlining. I only heard of them in a round-about way... We've seen American Draft a few times (who I like a lot too) and went to a show not too long ago at the Empty Bottle. They played with Chord and Pelican. We didn't stay for Pelican, who headlined that one, but I was curious and set up a Pandora channel based on them. Russian Circles showed up on that a lot, and boy, excellent music!
So when I saw that they were going to be playing at the Bottom Lounge, I decided to get us tickets. Great show- they really get into the music, and the music itself is terrific. It's post-rock, post-metal, all instrumental. Very driving but almost classical in the- um, I don't know what it's called- I want to say the storyline of the pieces, maybe the melody? The progression? Whatever. I'd highly encourage anyone who enjoys rock, metal and/or classical to give their music a listen. My favorite song thus far is "Death Rides a Horse."

Ali don't read this post! I mean it!

I'm way behind. I didn't realize it'd been so long since I checked in here. And I only have one sketch at my fingertips at the moment, hence the title of this post. It's something I'm doing for my sister Ali, but I want it to be a surprise. Ali- you'd better not be reading this!





So, I used this photo also to "sell" a service for an auction we did for charity at the office. I said I'd do a charcoal or graphite drawing on archival paper from a photo for the highest bidder- with the caveat that it shouldn't be a photo of a marching band, or a class reunion photo of the whole class... Anywho, this work in progress is what I gave as an example.
That's my nephew- you might have heard of him before, "The Cutest Little Boy Ever in the History of the World." He's accompanied by my brother-in-law, who's not too shabby himself. ;-) The problem- I like how the drawing is going, but I started it just as a sketch on plain drawing paper. So I don't know- should I redo it on better paper, or keep on with it and accept it's going to age faster? Meh.

More pastel work

A woman asked if I was using oil pastels last night, and when I told her no, chalk, she said "but your colors look so juicy!" Woot! ;-)
I suppose I should mention (I don't think I've mentioned it yet) - I do a lot of my drawing at The Drawing Workshop in Ravenswood. They have open figure drawing sessions twice a week, $15 for three hours of poses, ranging from 40 seconds to 25 minutes.
I'm trying to draw more at home though, since six hours a week is really not much time.
Speaking of Ravenswood- and I'm going to really out myself as laaaaazy here- I keep wondering where Ravenswood Manor is, the neighborhood our illustrious impeached governor lives in. The number of times I have wondered that wonder, you might think I would've googled it by now, right? I suppose I'm holding out hope that one day while traveling through the area, I'll catch sight of Blago and figure it out from there. You know, saving myself the trouble of having to do all that typing. Like, what I've just done here...
Anyhoo- we don't need to talk about that anymore. Here are some more iPhone photos of drawings, slightly less crappy picture-taking than usual.

Quick post.

I have to make this quick, because- and I readily admit, this is a ridiculous reason- Davey wants to go upstairs to bed. It'd be one thing if Davey were, say, a four-year-old child. He's not though. He's our seven-year-old Australian-shepherd/German-shepherd mix. He wants to go to bed, but he doesn't like going up by himself. And we give in to his wants. Sigh.

Anyhoo... I have a whole bunch of crappy pictures of figure drawings in pastels. I decided to be brave and start working in color again, and good gravy! I forgot how much I like pastels! And color! I'm thinking though... I really like to coat on the pastel- layers and layers. And that's so non-permanent, isn't it? So I probably need to get back to oils. Which brings in the problem of where to farging paint and 1) not give myself brain damage with the odors and 2) not make a total mess of the place. We're talking about eventually turning our useless garage into a studio, but in the meantime, I think I'm going to look for some studio space. Actually, I'm looking at applying to the School of the Art Institute of Chicago to get a certificate in painting. I did some painting for my BFA, but mostly drawing and photography.

Blah blah blah - I said this was going to be quick, didn't I? Drawings below.

Blah!

I am doing a terrible job of blogging regularly. Unless you consider it the context of how well I blogged previously. In which case, I rock. So, boo. Yay!

The "blah" of the title isn't actually about me blogging poorly/well(ly?). It's for another reason. I think I'm getting sick- for the first time this winter. Except it's not winter, it's freaking spring! I was almooooost clear of it. Meh. Or, blah.

I don't have any new photos of drawings, although I have plenty of new drawings to take photos of. There hasn't been much in the way of good light to take them though, and our lighting in the house? Terrible. Well, as you can tell from the pictures I've already posted.
But, I will take some new pics soon. The weather's getting nicer, we're actually seeing sunshine again. Woot!

In the meantime- we've been to a number of shows recently. One of my favorites was this past Friday at Ronny's in Logan Square. American Draft and the Werewolfs (sic) opened for OSO. We didn't stay for OSO though because we're old and lame and can't stay up past midnight. Okay, not quite true, since when we left we went to Taco Burrito House for "dinner" and definitely didn't get home before midnight. But you get the point.

So, the bands. The Werewolfs were good- they have a chick drummer who really rocks. She was wailing away, and really kicked ass. But American Draft- I love American Draft. http://www.myspace.com/americandraft Their music is nearly all instrumental, and it's very- I don't know- cinematic? Sometimes instrumentals just fade into the background and are more about white noise, but their stuff definitely is not. Well, first of all, it's loud, so it'd be bad white noise to begin with. But aside from that obvious tidbit, it's so energetic and alive, and feels like there's a story happening in it.

As far as Ronnie's- that was the first time we'd been there. And I was a little concerned after reading the reviews it got on Yelp. Dirty, filthy, worst bar ever... Okay, so it wasn't exactly what I'd call spic and span. But worst bar ever? Noooo. Lots of interesting people- definitely a melange of types. And plenty to look at. It has what my mom would call "character." (She's a greasy spoon aficianado, and turned me- kicking and screaming- into one too.) I suppose for full disclosure though, I should mention that I'm from the U.P. So my standards for what's considered a dirty, filthy, worst bar ever are pret-ty high. Or would that be low?

Okay, so blah blah blah. All that to say, it was a great show, in a very interesting bar.

It's almost World Diabetes Check Day!

Woot! Yeah, I know- party. If you're interested (and pretty much everyone who doesn't have diabetes already should be interested) in checking your risk though, the American Diabetes Association has a risk test online. http://www.diabetes.org/food-nutrition-lifestyle/lifestyle-prevention/risk-test.jsp?WTLPromo=hp-promo

And I'd strongly suggest going to your doctor and having your blood glucose and/or A1c tested if you are at risk. Diabetes is one of those things that is so much better to discover early, and you can do many things to help prevent any complications if you do find out about it early.

So enough sermonizing. It's been too long since I posted drawings, so I'm going to post a few and come back later to comment (only have a couple minutes to spare right now). I apologize in advance for my trademark crappy-photo-ness!

Doodling

I was doodling while uploading files the other day, but I get tired of doodling things out of my head... (Is that sad? I can't decide.) But I remembered I have a big old stash of magazines in one of my cabinets. Found a spread about Jeremy Piven in an Instyle, and decided to draw from that. Here's one of the drawings:



-- Post From My iPhone

Pic

Okay, so I did manage to upload a drawing from last night...
The model was great- very hairy, but great all the same.
I was afraid while I was drawing her face that she might look too old, but now that it's online, I feel better about it. It really does look like her.

Time to sleep

Yikes! I'm tired!
So, L and I went to Atomic Sketch Event at the Evil Olive tonight. It was pretty danged-de-dooby good. Two artists that we both really liked: Ryan Young, the featured artist-whose stuff reminded me of Mucha, and John Ario, more of a street artist thing. L bought a quick piece by him. I'll have to take and post a pic.


-- Post From My iPhone

Slacker

Oh, it's been too long. I've only been slacking on posting though, not on drawing or going to shows or being diabetic.
I've finally taken some more (not very good) pics of drawings, so I've got that going for me anyway... I also saw my endo and got my latest A1c (3-month blood glucose average). 6.4. Not my lowest, but it's still pretty good- the ADA sets a goal of 7.0 for diabetics to shoot for, for improving their health and to avoid complications as much as possible. When the weather gets warm again, it'll probably go down a couple points.

The wonders of the Interwebs- after some funky highs and lows, I found online that some people (myself included, apparently) need less insulin during warmer weather. Interesting! My sister found a study that said Finns (we're a bit Finnish) have a higher than average incidence of Type 1 diabetes. I wonder if the lack of sunshine is a contributor somehow? I wonder if increasing Vitamin D intake would help at all?

Anywho- I'm no scientist although I like to pretend. I'm a drawer, so here are some drawings. The drawing of the bearded fellow at right is from just about two weeks ago. You'll note the bottom half of his body is a bit smaller than it ought to be. That's because I'm a lazy person who can't be bothered to try to take a decent photo of my drawings. Tsk.

Pic is on newsprint, with a Mars Lumograph pencil somewhere in the range of 4B-8B, as are most of my drawings. I want to break out the chalk pastels sometime soon- love to work with chalk pastels- but this cold weather is already killing my hands as it is. If I bring out the pastels now, I won't have any skin left on them. And then how will I blend? Plus, blood everywhere. Nope, pastels'll have to wait a bit longer.

Next you'll see a slim guy with no hair. Normally, I don't like drawing skinny people. People with more meat on their bones are usually more interesting to work with, in my opinion. This model was great though- very dynamic
poses, very athletic guy. Again, note the tiny bottom half. I promise, it's not because I picture every person as a Bratz doll- it's my pathetic picture taking. When the weather gets better I'll go outside and get some decent lighting, which will also spur me to take more care in my angles, or else one of these days I'll splurge and get a bigger scanner.*

*Please don't hold your breath though. I can't be held responsible for any injury that may incur.


To the near right, a girl who posed on Sunday. She posed for us previously, and I had T-R-O-U-B-L-E with it. Kept moving! However, I had a much easier time of it Sunday, and I think it's because I'm getting more practice drawing more quickly. Sadly, this could mean that my previous problems drawing her are my fault... Let's ignore that possibility though, and just enjoy the drawing. It'd be a better drawing if she wasn't looking at her own booty from a previous sketch, wouldn't it?


Finally, on the far right, another self portrait, this from my own face in the mirror. This was done with Derwent Graphitint pencils, which my sister gave me for Christmas, and what a gift! I haven't used them wet yet, but as soon as I find my watercolor paper, I will. I'm pretty pleased with the drawing, aside from the wonky eye. I don't actually have a wandering eye- not that there's anything wrong with that- no, my "thing" is a milder version of the Cindy Brady lisp. I was explaining to my husband a little while ago though- the eyes are where they were when I was drawing each. So the right eye is looking at where the right eye was in the mirror, and the left eye is looking at where the left eye was in the mirror. Didn't even occur to me to adjust for that. Mm-mm-mm. Silly girl!

Okay. Enough. Hope all is well tonight!

Las Vegas Bunny

Woo-hoo! Just got in to Vegas a little while ago. We're going to nap a little while (I know that's lame, but I was up late overpacking, and Lloyd was up late watching me overpack), and then go play some cards. We're staying downtown this time, at the Golden Nugget, so we can get more poker playing in. We might go up to the Strip tomorrow night for the UFC fight though... It wasn't planned this way, but the last time we were in Vegas was for a Penn UFC fight.

Anyway, I'm going to miss drawing this Sunday because we're not flying back 'til the afternoon. I did go last night (hence staying up late to overpack, rather than doing it earlier) b

ut didn't get to scan any of the

 drawings. The model was very good, has a great face, but it took me so long to get warmed up... I need to sketch more in between sessions.

So until I get some more drawings uploaded, here's something else I finished recently. The title is "Self-portrait Five." A self-portrait, if I were a rabbit. The top is cropped because I couldn't fit the whole thing on the scanner, and was too lazy to do anything about it. 

Slacking.

Well, I had intended to post some pics Friday morning. Didn't quite happen. The hub and I went to Ann Arbor for the weekend, for my brother-in-law's father's viewing and funeral. Although, of course, I'd rather it be under different circumstances, it was good to spend time with family and friends.

Today I didn't make it back in time for the model session, and then I pooped out and didn't even do any drawing. So I have only some sketches from this past Wednesday. I was lazy and took photos (bad photos) instead of scanning too. It didn't help that our big kitty Lucius (or Luxi- yep, this blog is named after him) wanted to get in on the action (see at right).

The model for the session Wednesday was great... She held her poses very well. And there were many good poses too. Oh, I lied- I do have a drawing from a week ago Sunday (see below). I didn't have a lot of drawings I liked from there, because that model moved constantly, and I have the bad habit of constantly redrawing, redrawing, redrawing, even though I know the pose is changing. Meh!

Turn it up to 11!

So, it's my 11-year date-versary with my husband. Crazy! Married 6 and a half years... Sorry to be so trite but, where did the time go? We celebrated by- well, L worked late, poor guy!- but when he got home, we had dinner and dessert, and then watched TV. Woot! ;) It was a good dinner and dessert though. I made paninis on the George Foreman grill. Colby-jack, smoked turkey, and Pink Lady apple slices on sourdough. Num num! And sweet potato fries from Trader Joes. And then I made a blueberry grunt- which was not exactly how it should be because, although we have two full boxes of baking soda in the house, we have no boxes of baking powder. You may ask why I didn't go to the store and pick up the baking powder I needed. Well... I broke my Jeep. We'll just say, regular maintenance of your vehicle is important, people! But, I say, if you're making a dessert and it has some sort of fruit and you throw enough sugar in it and plenty of ice cream on top, it'll be plenty good. So whaddya know? Plenty good. ;)

Hmm... I was going to upload a couple drawings from last night's drawing workshop, but meh... I've tired myself out talking about food. I'll be back in the morning to talk drawing.

Inauguration Day

It's an exciting day- but honestly, it's not quite sunk in, the enormity of it... Do we really have our first black president here in the United States? I keep feeling like pinching myself. Whether you agree with his policies or not, it's a momentous occasion for the country.

Many others have much more well-considered thoughts on the meaning of this day, so any more on the subject, I will leave to them.

As for me... Another serious topic. My brother-in-law's father passed away this afternoon. It wasn't completely out of the blue, but it was still unexpected, all the same. This also has not quite sunk in for me. He was too young for this to happen; in his sixties, active, full of personality... He was diagnosed with an aggressive prostate cancer more than a year ago, but he had been doing very well, and then within the last couple weeks, began feeling quite badly. I am glad he was able to have a very full life, shorter than we would have liked, but longer than many get... But I also feel so badly for my brother-in-law and sister, my nephew, their family. It's incomprehensible, how someone you love so much can be with you one moment and gone the next. But, although I don't necessarily believe in a god or the stereotypical afterlife, I very much believe in an everlasting comfort and peace, and that those we love are always with us and that our love is always with them.

Now, on to less serious things. That ugly purple circle I got last week from my pump? Got another one! Ugly, ugly... (And, of course, it's rather disturbing to see blood pouring out of your stomach, which is what happened when I took the infusion set out in each instance.) So, it finally occurred to me, gee, maybe you should try Googling this, Keel! And surprise, surprise- someone's had the problem and posted how they addressed it. Actually, numerous someone's have. This links to the best advice I've found so far (scroll down to TonyAlmeida's comments): http://www.medhelp.org/forums/Diabetes/messages/745.html

On the subject of music... My husband and I went to the Bottom Lounge Friday night to see some bands, in particular, a fairly new one called Papillion. that we've seen a couple times before. I suppose they'd be considered garage rock? Enjoyed their set once again, and we're looking forward to the next show. We also stayed to see American Draft, which is an instrumental metal band. Exactly what I was looking for! (Seriously... There's a lot of metal lately where I hear the start of the song and think "oh, this is gr-" and then the Cookie growl starts. Meh!

Also on music, and metal... I've been listening to the Talking Metal podcast, which is pretty entertaining. The one I just listened to (and I'll admit, I'm way behind) featured Uriah Heep, and they apparently just put out a new album. (Well, within the last year.) Uriah Heep? What?!! I need to check this out.

One last thing before I have to say goodnight. Started reading volume 1 of a comic? graphic novel? called The Surrogates. Came out in 2006. The story is interesting, although the dialogue is kind of trite. But my intent really is to check out the artwork, see how the layout moves the eye. Okay, and be entertained. But really, I do think it's educational as well as entertaining! :D

Oh, look at me!

Not even a week has passed, and I'm already back!

(Okay, I know, not that impressive. Unless you're me. I'm incredibly impressed by this.)

Had a couple great figure drawing workshops in the last week. Sunday, we drew from two models. Two! Sadly, this was the first opportunity that I've had in my life to draw from two models. Is that pathetic? It rocked though. The initial, shorter poses were a tad goofy- I mean, when in life do you have a man standing naked on his head with a woman holding him by the feet? Well, okay, there may be times, but none that should be recorded in art, IMHO. But the later, longer poses were great. I have a couple I want to work into finished drawings. Hell, maybe even a painting. Snippet at left. His face is not good at all- I had a heck of a time trying to get his look in that pose, and finally I was just ruining the paper, so I said, okay. Done.

Then yesterday evening, we had a female bodybuilder. You haven't seen abs of steel until you've seen this woman...! She was quite slender too. Normally, I find drawing thin people rather boring, but she had such good muscle definition that she was very interesting to draw.

Oop... My pump is buzzing, time to check my blood sugar. I had leftover pasta for dinner, which was pretty tasty. I'm a brat and rarely get around to eating leftovers, but I'm trying to be good. Both to be green, and to save some cash. Meh!

Speaking of my pump- I need to start paying more attention to when my reservoir and infusion set need to be changed, or I'm going to have a belly full of little round scars! (See right.) Nice, huh? I'm going to have to set an alarm on my Outlook to remind me to change it. Because time passes way top fast for me, apparently.

Yet again.

Blog restart eight billion and one.

In theory, I am going to be using this blog to talk art, post drawings, keep my ass moving. What'll really happen? Uh... I'm trying to think of something suitably pithy and self-deprecating, yet charmingly funny... But it's nearly 2:00 AM (I know, I know- I can't help it. I'm becoming middle-aged), and I think I used up my coherent brain cells coming up with "pithy" and "self-deprecating."

So anyhoo... I'm going to try to keep this blog up-to-date and full of drawings. I'll probably also:

1. Talk about shows- both art and music- that my husband and I see (We try to take in a lot of local stuff- support the Chicago scene.) (Um, ouch... I don't think I'm actually allowed to use the word "scene.")
   
2. Whine about the oddness of being a juvenile diabetic who is not a juvenile (I may occasionally be juvenile, but I am not a juvenile.)
3. Show a frightening amount of enthusiasm for the show "Rock of Love Bus" (No excuse, I know.)