Florida green

Yes, it is pretty simple, but sometimes simple is nice. This is one of the trees in front of the kid's place in Florida. We were there in January. And although I missed the cold and snow of Kanss, it was nice to have green all around.  Never cold and never too hot...

A little light on the subject

The piano lamp looking out over the music waiting there to be played at SR's.  

 

This lamp at the time was in the corner behind the couch. It has since moved out of the corner, but it made a good study of light and shadow in a corner....    Done in pencil in an effort to catch some of the tonal variations.

Starbucks 2-12

I told SR I would meet her at Discount Tire and then she was planning on getting us some coffee. So that's how we ended up at Starbucks in the middle of the day. Can't say that Starbucks is my thing, but did enjoy the coffee and a chance to sit and talk.

Pretty soon Shannon asked me if I was going to do any drawing. She wanted me to do this fella, and was determined I do it enough to trade me spots so I could see him a bit better.

The guy, like most artists, was oblivious to what was going on around him. That was true whether he was painting on the tee shirt or watching some video on his phone- he was totally into it. Good to see someone totally out of the norm. Although I suppose he has his own definition of what's "trending" as most of us do. He was hunched over his work with a few bottles of fabric paint sitting close, with 2 racks of others sitting on the floor beside him. Yes, he is into this! The notes down the side of the drawing tell among other things what was printed on the shirt he was wearing. You have seen it before. The first time we saw one was posted on a wall in an obscure donut shop in Tahlequah, Oklahoma.

This was the 2nd drawing done while there. The first was in ink. This in pencil. I had intentions of switching to ink at some point, but as is often the case, that did not happen. Both drawings are in the ubiquitous 5 x 9 inch Canson pad. Just heavy enough paper to avoid marker ink bleeding through.

Here is the first drawing of the session. We were stuck in the front corner, so that a lot of what was going on was visible to us. I should do more of this sort of sketching. It is way cool when it works, and pretty embarrassing when it does not. The stool and the counter gave a great backdrop to a bit of people scribbles. 
This drawing got me warmed up to do the Native American tee shirt artist next. Although the tee shirt guy  seems a whole lot less finished due to the nature of the medium, it was a bit more complicated and every bit as enjoyable.

Summer wetland suprises

The rose mallow in bloom was not common in the  wetlands this summer. But it was fun to actually see the delicate  pure white flower with the deep rose center. I think the note says, "Single erect top branches," which pretty much describes the upper growth pattern. The leaves are I guess the most narrow of the mallows, and in threes as you see here. The flower are very striking. 

This drawing seems to me to have an unusual air about it-(don't laugh!) like an old woodcut illustration from the early 1900's.  Ok, maybe its just wishful thinking on my part....

The monster leaves of the arrowhead make it impossible to miss. But the wait for a bloom took most of the summer. Eventually it came, and then what do you know, this is the only drawing I did this summer of the spikes. I should do a series of sketches of this unusual plant. The original pencil date actually read 8/29/17- August, not March which would be way too early obviously!

Sum & Sub...

On this trip past these flowers I was headed home from my morning walk.  I had to cross the street for this drawing, and delay my arrival home by some minutes.   These are similar hostas as those growing in our back yard, but they are less crowded and maybe get a bit more sun- I don't think that matters with hostas, but they seem to do better than ours- at least in the quality of the blooms. These seem to be less bell shaped flower than ours, but the pattern they make reaching out from the center is just classic.

This batch. however, were ours. The blooms are a pleasure to draw. they have such clear white flowers in pale green surroundings. The emphasis in this second drawing seems to be on the leaves.    
You can see the preliminary pencil sketch underlying the ink drawing in this one.
The title of this post comes from what I suppose to be the name of this variety of hosta. .

table legs

Let's put a couple more drawings on the table.    👀
We stopped one of these nights during a snowstorm in Kentucky. There was no one in the breakfast area late at night, so I could do some sketching unobserved...  When we were ready to go the next morning, the place was full and the truckers were talking about the interstate east that we wanted to take being shut down for 20 miles...

The second was also late at night of the table in a different breakfast nook.

Both of these sketches were done with the notion of trying to break the image down into just a couple tones, as well as seeing and using more shapes than line. That is a bit difficult for someone who thinks in a linear sorta' way.  The first sketch, done as we started our trip, was in a 5 x 9 pad that I finished up later that week. The second, done on the way home 2+ weeks later, was in a new pad I started while on the trip. The 0.9 lead that I have been using is some new stuff I got off Amazon; and some is 2B, which, though it is very easy to break, it gives some very nice darks with very little sheen. That may make a drawing a bit easier to photograph.

These drawings are all pencil, but they are becoming less common it seems. Ink survives better in a sketch pad that you are hauling around; and it also reproduces easier with a phone camera.  So I use the ink more often unless the subject needs a more subtle touch than the ink will provide- as in the case of a landscape. In this case though, I was just too far into it with too little patience to switch to ink.   I should revisit this study on a fresh sheet of paper, using only ink to see if I can get the stark tones of the ink to make sense.

Bridge at Prairie Park

This is the sketch done on a chilly and snowy morning of the long bridge at Prairie Park. Between Christmas and New Years you would have thought there would be a some kids at the park. Not.
This was another example of  me not having seen this particular scene in this light. Though we have often been through here in the snow only today did the notion strike me to sketch it. Ink seemed the perfect medium- quick enough to not let my hands get too cold.

Here is the watercolor sketch of the main bridge over the creek at Prairie Park north of the lake. I did this about a week after the ink. It is the only bridge in the park with a jog in it. Made of wood, it is a replacement for one that did not survive the abuses mother nature dishes out- too much high water on the creek.  This bridge was set higher and longer, with concrete pillars.  When we first moved to the area there were no bridges in the park. There was not even a park; just a farm pond turned into a city fishing lake. Some of the area was still farmed. The area where the Nature Center now sands was an unfarmed field with 2 small farm ponds. Some of that area is now housing on Harper. We with the kids wandered all over the area summer and winter. At that time there was no concrete in the park, including on the dam, which had to be widened and strengthened when the walk was added. 

N 1300 road

Leaving our house and heading east, I walked through the "Hundred Acre Wood" to SR's to drop off a Pepsi. That's one mile.  Next I continued south and east to 31st street, which there reverts to 1300 north. I have done numerous sketches and paintings from biking and walking along this road. But it is never the same; there is always something different to see, or a different way of seeing things....
Ain't that the way it is with God's creation?
Done in the 5 x 9 pad I have been using since starting it in Florida just over 3 weeks ago. That's nearly 60 pages ago. Most are no where near as detailed as this one. I suppose I spent about 15 - 20 minutes on this one, standing on the north edge of the road. Some of these drawings just work out better than others...  I noticed some mistakes of detail when I got home, but the overall drawing turned out pretty crisp- seems to me.
The weather was clear, chilly and a bit of a breeze. It got up to about 38 deg. F. they were saying. Walking home, as I usually do at a brisk pace,  I began to get too hot.

rainy day stand

It was a  raining this day and had been cloudy for days while we were traveling up north. These folk were waiting at the corner as we were passing by. Some heavy ink drawings for quick and for fun...

Boot lamp

This was the lamp that was beside my bed as a kid. Why or how that came to be I don't remember. This year after cleaning out Dad's office for the final time it ended up on our kitchen table for a spell.   Now 55 or so years later it has returned to the side of my bed.  Thought maybe an old boot did not belong on the kitchen table. It is actually a plaster casting, including the base that is made to look like a piece of one-by. The shade has never been replaced, and does not look too bad, considering it is almost as old as I.

843 Connecticut

This is across the street from the locksmith. We seem to make a stop here every few months for one key or another... I like to sit here a spell in the parking lot to draw.  It is an old part of town and it seems to agree with my disposition....or my relaxed style of drawing, These ink drawings done with little or no forethought can be very satisfying to do. Almost no shading- just line.  It is amazing how little our brains really need to extrapolate from the few lines on the page to an entire story...

Wingstem

This wingstem was nearing the end of its bloom.  I had discovered this patch of flowers on an early August walk, but its season was drawing shorter. The ray petals  have mostly dropped, but the unusual center disc provided plenty of interest.  This was in Baker Wetlands on what I've been calling the east canal.  
The light pencil sketch at the bottom is of a cup plant that I could not resist sticking on this page.

 Here is another drawing of the wingstem.  Looks an awful lot like a sunflower, but is not of the genus Helianthus as are the true sunflowers. Verbesina alternifolia, the wingstem was one easy for me to identify, as it has such a distinct flower disc; it also has the wings running along its stem, hence the name.

Plant on the hutch

I had been trying to practice a bit of advice from the Gurey Journey blog. That is, put your tones together in groups. It has been a great help to me...  The application may be a bit different when using only black ink, but I tried to apply the idea here. This-the grouping of tones- was a trick practiced by the likes of Howard Pyle, and others on up throught the Art of Star Wars, The Force Awakens -just look at the cover, and compare it to some of N.C. Wyeth's illustrations. Wyeth, as a student of Pyle's, knew the technique well.  My guess is that men like Winslow Homer, who cut his teeth on the illustration trade in the the days of single color etchings for the magazine trade, learned quickly the importance of the grouping of tones, as seems evident in some of his early drawing.

a page from the sketch pad

9/8 7AM P. Park-
I apparently did some other sketches the same trip. I think this was the first of them, done as a sort of warm up.
These small buttoned coneflowers with the sparse narrow petals were usually along the trail before you get to where the downy sunflower were in abundance.
This page is again done without any preliminary pencil; just jumping
right in with the ink.

Three sketches from Praire Park

Rattlesnake Master is my guess...

Done on the 5th of February after a weekend snow.  There are many summer wild flowers that become fantastic shapes in their winter grays; I got a kick out of what is left of the seed pods and the odd angles of the remaining bracts.

This is the 1st of the 3 drawings done on this long Monday morning walk- almost 2 hours. We had been out of town for a spell, so this was my first long walk after getting back to eastern Kansas.

It had taken me a while to pull out the sketch pad. Seemed too cold to draw. But eventually the repeated inspirations assaulting my vision convinced my reluctant spirit. 

How could you pass up the chance for a sketch of the top of a red cedar leaning with the prevailing winds. Especially with a Yellow-shafted Flicker sitting at the top and calling.

He is here as he was there, a bit hard to see in the shadow of the tree.  About all I could see of his color was a bit of the red head, as the bright clouds of the snow sun were silhouetting everything. This was the 2nd drawing on a 15 degree morning.

Here then is the last drawing of this snowy morning walk. The text reads, "Snow Day @ Prairie Park."

By the time this last one was done, my fingers were in pain, even in this case, drawing with leather mittens on. 

The contrast of the light clouds, and the lighter snow with the darks between, inspired me to draw a scene I have not drawn before.

As usual, the photography is not professional...

These were all done in the 5x9 pad that I can carry in a small bag with binoculars and other accoutrements of the trade...

Jerusalem Artichoke

This sunflower blooms a bit later in the season than some it seems. If you want to find them, head down to the wetlands in mid September and you will find them along the trails on the north side of the Wakarusa river.  They will be nodding out into the path...

You can see some of the pencil preliminary sketch under the inks.

the baseball cap

So the next night we sat around reading & sketching again for a few minutes after the kids were in bed, and this was the result...
MGH'S hat was sitting under the light...
Done in a 5 x 9 inch pad with a pencil sketch topped with ball point and gel pen.

AE's Table

How about a couple days of interiors from the kids place in Georgia...
This is the dining table at Matthew's, that he built with walnut from Phil Schonberg.
Most every one was in bed when this drawing was done.
Ana Elise, at four years old recognised their table when she woke the next morning...

The daisy & the bug...

This daisy is another flower with a beatle as the center peice.
It is hard to get board when there are so may wildflowers around to draw.