basil wasp traps

Most of these sketches are straight from the sketch pad. Here is one of the cans over the fence stakes that hold up the 2' tall wire fence that is an attemp to keep the dogs out of the herb garden.       A simple sketch of a simple method of marking garden stakes and preventing a fall injury. The title is tongue in cheek...  The cans work too well as a wasp nesting place.  Wasps keep down the flies and the mosquitoes, right??  Just don't lift one of the cans without being ready to run!

Back o' Lincoln

Pulled into the parking lot of the old school building in town that is now Midland, where Gramma Ruth goes one morning a week.  I had a few minutes to kill, and here was this little place I had thought would be good to sketch.  So here it is.   Done with a Sharpie in a small sketch pad.  I have tried other pens, but none lasts any better, and all cost more, so here we are back to this.  One sketch pad will outlast 4 or 5 Sharpies.

AO672

Do not believe the number at the bottom.  There is no 2778 "in our town" as one famous person once said.  The AO672(1) on the light pole may get you closer.  One day a couple weeks ago a utility truck pulled up to this pole in the rain and the single occupant in the truck ran his lift up to the top of the pole pulling the power line that had fallen on the ground along with him. He then reattached it to the pole by himself while it was still drizzling. Guess he knew the power was dead- no way he could'a kept anything dry up there...         Oh, actually the number 2778 was meant to be 27 TWENTY 8  --  So it is the view from our window.

AE's Chickin.

Kept thinking about doing this while playing with the grandkids in middle Georgia:  "should do a bunch of quick thumbnails of their black hen."  This is one of a couple pages that could'a gone on until the pen was dry. A hen cuts a classic figure. The hen came with the house when they moved; it also came with a black cat that turned into 2 black cats.  They were identical cats but until they both showed up at the same time nobody knew.  The hen, I think, got air lifted out by a "chicken hawk" and has since been replaced by a number of others and a roof over the chicken coop.
Done in a 5" x  9" scetch pad.  The notes remind me that the hen laid its first egg while we were there. It was green. The hen's head was dark red.  Also listed are some of the less common birds we saw while in the area. One, the Northern Harrier, was not, I am sure, the hawk that got "Blackie" the chicken.

6 ottoman

Breakfast is over. The day is ready to begin. The 6 peice ottoman/ coffee table in the waiting area caught my interest. This combination of 2 studies was done with a soft lead in a Pentel .9 pencil.

4th & Perry

There is never any shortage of stuff to draw when you go north of the Kaw River.  The place is almost quaint, in a mid-western river town sort of a way.  In the old days there were more tomatoes grown here than about anywhere east of, and maybe even including California. That's because they were canned locally.   Lots of newer homes now, but North Lawrence is still a haunt for images like this...  Done in pencil in a 9" x 12" Canson pad.

4th & Lincoln

Less than half a block north of the "4th & Perry" pencil sketch that I will post next, this drawing was done a couple weeks earlier.  I had been noticing the place for some time.  4th street stops right there, so I could just sit on the side of the street and do this ink drawing.

3-13-16

I have done a watercolor or two of this scene.   This sketch has actually inspired a couple. It was early in the day when the sun was creating good ambiance in the shadows on the back of the houses.

Indoor Plants

I had even taken pictues of this scene thinking I should draw it sometime.  This was the time.  Just a line drawing, cause I was feeling lazy and I liked the interelation of all the negative spaces.  For some reason negative spaces are not as intimidating as possitive ones.  Negative ideas, though, now that's another story.                   You can find some of these plants in drawings and paintings done before this one.  This was before most of these ended up back outside in the spring, where they suffer much more from the bugs and the heat. It was even before they had suffered through a long winter of not enough sunshine in the sw window of the guest room...

north out of Tahlequah

We were headed north out of Tahlequah after a great weekend.  This was about the last place to get gas before heading north on highway 82.  The scene was directly in front of me and took only a few seconds to sketch (I know you say it looks like it too!).  Well I may have not been too impressed at first, but as it sits a spell...   Yup, there's somehthing to be said for a line drawing in ink.

Jeep coming

Where or when or by who?  How do you know when the artist does not even bother to initial his work??  Yea, I know I should, but this was probably just a thumbnail done with a date and place noted somewhere close by.
I do know that it was done with a Sharpie.
Well it has been a couple months since posting something.
No skin off any one's nose I hope!
Decided I better get back with it.  It has not been for lack of drawings to post, so this will be the first of a number more I trust.
Also been working on getting set up to do some matting and framing of my stuff, which process I will show you some of as we get back going here...

Did this sketch one recent Saturday morning when I was waiting for Louis to finish Gramma Ruth's hair. I was planning on a short bird walk a the Lawrence Nature Trail off Folks Road, but had forgotten my binoculars, so I sat instead south of the Mercantile and did this sketch.  Later on last week I started the watercolor painting which took a bit, but is now done. And here is the watercolor below.

Broken Arrow

Here is the painting and the drawing that was the inspiration for the painting. Been meaning to do some power line studies just for the shapes and angles.  This particular day we were catching a burger at Hardees and headed to the park when Stephanie suggested to kill a little time I could draw while she read. The ink sketch was the result.  After it sat at home a day, then I transferred it to a 9 x 12" chunk of Arches 140# and started the watercolor.  This is the result.  After scratching my head about it this weekend I put some finishing touches on it today.  It is done now don't ya think?? Shannon thought that the photo missed some of the color...  That's the problem with my primitive system...

This is the stone shelter that we used to take the kids to in the day. Now, once in a great while we might take the grandkids.

flag ship

Not often that this is the view outside of the Senior Center, but this day the fire truck was sitting along the curb on 8th street.  It gave me a different subject for a change.

outa the park

"inspired while riding out of Prarire Park with Stephanie in the evening." This is the note on the edge of the painting.   We were on the tandem.  It was March 3rd.  The painting was  done on the 5th after it had stirred around in my head a little bit. Kinda like makin' good tapioca puddin' or so I'm told- some things need to just simmer for a time...The trees had only begun to fill out and it was nearly a month till the spring warbler migration would begin in earnest, but the weather had warmed and cleared and we were out for a short ride.  Inspirations come to the artist when they do...

Winter fence line.

This scene is presented to me every day from the kitchen window.  I should do a sketch or something from there every day. It changes from the passing of the sun (or moon) and its movement north to south over the seasons. This was done from a drawing- barely a sketch- that I cannot even find now. None of the paintings from this window have been as spontaneous as this one. Or I should say, none show the qualities of the water color medium as clearly as this painting does.

Clear & cool

This painting is dated the 26th of February. 2 days after "59 South".  Although the note on the margin says to Norman, I guess we were actually on the return trip when I sketched the thumbnail.  I thought I had some of the prelims as well as the final painting, but do not see the sketches now, so...  This painting has some qualities of spontaneity that I like, though they are not always easy to reproduce. Done on Canson 140#  WC  paper  7"x10"

East end of 11th

The note on this sketch from the east side of town is Dec 15 - the number I think indicates the year, not the day. Done on a small piece of Canson 140# paper maybe 5" x 9".  I like this one for its freshness and for me some experimental color. It took a very short time to do in the studio with sketches done from memory after driving around this corner earlier in the day.

Between Blue Mound and the tower...

Here is a scene I went looking for one weekend on the roads east of here near the construction zone. I have done drawings here in the last few years before this overpass and before you could see the farm house so easily from this spot.  You can see the notes on this painting done on location.  they tell what the conditions were.  Just about perfect... Mid afternoon, 60 degrees and clear with little breeze- not bad for the 10th of December...
This is actually E 1750 road looking south.
I was using a makeshift easel that I had put together for doing watercolor from the back of the bike, but it really does not get small enough, so back to the drawing board. I will have to post a pic of it one of these times.

the little gate

This painting was done from sketches after returning from a trip on July 19th.  The painting has the date of December 2, 2015.  We were all headed to ElDorado in Dorothy's car for Emma's baptizm at the local pool with a swim afterwards.   This road trip was one week after the trip in which we were stopped on the KTA just after torrential rains flooded the highway.  I have told myself before that it would be better to wait in Emporia than risk trying to get though.       I pieced this painting together from the thumbnail of the gate and one of the barn.  I put them together because I know of at least one such place near here- with the vintage man gate and an old farmstead in the background.  So a bit of creative cutspugh and olah...   I was dealing with a more specific grassy foreground than what I have done recently, so this was a bit experimental.  But it may be good to keep a work on the verge of failure so the mind and senses are at full attention.  As usual, the photograph leaves something to be desired...
Below are some of the preliminary things I did in the process of doing this painting. The finished painting is 11 by 15 inches on Canson 140# paper.

Here are the studies for the completed painting as well as the sketch of the gate done on the road while Stephanie was driving.  I do not always do drawings in such detail as this, but there were many questions about layout I wanted to clarify.  The gate was a new problem for me so I wanted to see how it would work with the foreground grass and the barn, before actually jumping into the painting.  I had some idea in my head before even these sketches.  There are always surprises with watercolor, but I was trying to make sure they were positive ones...  Its like babysitting grand kids-  you know they will surprise you somehow- but it is nice when they are possitive ones!

This is a very fun stage, when you begin to see how things are going together.  I did a full size sketch of the fence and barn just to get the juxtaposition of lights and darks to where it made sense, using thin white tape to delineate the wire by laying it over the top of the sketch in the dark spots. Strange approach I know, but it helped me....