Paint Party Friday - Portraits

WOW! I can't believe it's been over two weeks since my last post. I do love blogging so I will try to do better.

During that time, I have been busy catching up with some online classes. Sketchbook Skool and Craftsy classes to be more precise. While watching some class videos, I sketched two of the teachers. 

Danny Gregory - sketched directly with pen in my Moleskine sketchbook

Nina Johansson - sketched with Derwent Inktense pencils in Moleskine sketchbook. Unfortunately, the Moleskine sketchbook isn't very compatible with water on the Inktense...it wanted to grab rather than blend the colour. Moleskine sketchbooks are definitely better with dry media but I admit to often using watercolours in them as I really don't mind the different effect they give.  That said, I do prefer their watercolour notebooks which are designed for water media.

It's been a while since I've done Paint Party Friday so I will be linking up today. To see the work of other participants this week, click HERE.

We had a couple of foggy mornings earlier in the week.  To me, fog always has an air of mystery about it. I've never experienced a pea soup fog though...have you?

My studio work-space has moved....yet again. It is now situated beside our lounge room where it has been once before. It was in a dedicated studio room but my son has taken up an interest in vlogging on YouTube so needed an area to set up all his filming equipment. We both share that room now so I can still have all my art supplies housed in the wardrobes.  If you are interested in checking out Aaron's blog, click HERE...especially if you love birds.

Note Cody wearing the dreaded cone?  A few years ago, the poor thing developed a wart right between his eyes and it grew quite large to the point of irritating him. He would scratch at it or rub it about on the carpet causing it to bleed so out came the cone. He was not amused. I have been treating the wart daily with castor oil, applied topically after a hot water compress, and the wart has decreased in size dramatically so, hopefully, he won't have to put up with the cone for too much longer. Truth be told, I have attempted this method twice before over the past couple of years but, each time, I had to put the treatment on hold due to my carpal tunnel surgeries. This time, I am determined to see it through.

The animal cards on the wire rack are courtesy of my long-time art friend, Judith Edwards-White. Judy does the most amazing scratchboard art....SO talented!  You can check out her website HERE....well worth a look-see.

That winds up my post for today. 

It's Friday here so I will wish you all a lovely weekend.

Paint Party Friday: Energy Saver bulb

I was feeling quite sick yesterday so was not going to sketch at all for Paint Party Friday but then, when 10 o'clock hit last night, I started feeling a little guilty despite having a good excuse. I had been very pleased with myself in meeting the different art challenge commitments the past few weeks and I just couldn't let it slide.  So I dragged my sick bod over to my art desk and chose to do a quick ink sketch of the spent Philips Energy Saver light-bulb sitting on my desk awaiting disposal. I couldn't take a decent photo with the artificial lighting last night so I quickly snapped one this morning. Still not a good photo but time is of the essence as I'm already running late by Aussie time.

Sketch - Philips Energy Saver light-bulb sketched directly with pen then followed up with some sumi ink which I painted on with a brush for shading.

OH my! I just went to get the current link from the Paint Party Friday blog for this week, only to see that one of my sketches has been featured in their post. How lovely! Thanks, Kristin and Eva!

Now, I'm even more relieved that I didn't let this week slide by due to sickness. 

To see the work of other participants for this week, click HERE. Come join us next week for a special 'Party' theme to celebrate them starting their seventh year with the Paint Party Friday challenge. YAY!

Have a wonderful weekend, everyone!

Another Sktchy portrait

It's been a while since I've done a Sktchy portrait but the urge took me this morning so I dived right in and chose a 'victim' from the tons of reference images available. I love Sktchy!  It's only available for IOS but it's a great tool for artists. It's basically a library of reference images, mostly people pics, that are uploaded by other artists. Artists painting other artists — too cool!

I sketched Marissa directly in pen, then added some watercolours trying to be loose and messy.

Linking up with Paint Party Friday again this week. To see the work or other PPF participants, click HERE.

I hope you all have a beautiful and fun weekend.

Sketches from my week

Thankfully, we had a little rain through the week which gave us a reprieve from the horrible heatwave temps.  The forecast says tomorrow's temperature will be 34°C/93.2°F — not quite heatwave temps but hot, nonetheless.  I know I'm a whiner when it comes to high heat and humidity but I can't help it. What can I say — I'm a winter gal at heart.

So, I have more pen sketches to share for Paint Party Friday.  To see the work of other participants for this week, click HERE.

I forced myself to be super-duper-fast when sketching the wheelie bins below. Loose, simple, and not a lot of detail. It happened to be 'bin collection day' hence my choice of subject. The yellow-lidded bin is for recycled stuff.

We often enjoy a healthy snack of Medjool dates and Brazil nuts.  Dates are high in potassium and Brazil nuts help lower cholesterol. I used to hate dates many years ago but then I discovered the fresh, fleshy Medjool dates and now, I'm hooked on dates.

Long-nose pliars are a must in my tool box. They have come in so handy over the years. Funny, in school we were taught to spell it as 'pliars' but now, 'pliers' seems to be the go. Which way do you spell it?

My son's folding white cane — an aide for the blind that he could not do without.

I ended up sick with asthma after last Sunday's heatwave temps so relied heavily on my inhalers. I'm doing much better now thanks to these babies.

I don't think I mentioned it but the results from my lung function test were good. No signs of emphysema so it seems that asthma could well be the reason for why my lungs showed as slightly enlarged on an X-ray and during the actual test. Phew!

It's been a busy week with appointments so I'm looking forward to a restful weekend.

I hope you all have a lovely weekend whatever you are doing.

More sketches for Paint Party Friday

We've experienced another week of unbearable heat and humidity and, to top it off, we are expecting a heatwave this weekend where temperatures could reach 42°C/107.6°F in our area.  It's times like this that I wish we had air-conditioning but I guess I'll be grateful when the electricity bill arrives. Looking for the positives, people... It's the humidity I can't handle — give me a dry heat any day.

Below are some messy pen/ink sketches from the past week or so. First up is Cody, my baby. He will be 11 years old this year and I love him dearly.  He is a Maltese/Shihtzu/Chihuahua mix but looks mostly like a Maltese.

And here he is having a good stretch after a nap

This is an extra large kennel which sits by our back sliding door. Cody and/or Jack only ever go in their kennel when they come inside with wet paws so they are only in the kennel long enough for their paws to dry off — which can be anything between five to thirty minutes. Both detest being put in the kennel yet, sometimes, I will wonder where Cody or Jack are and yep, you guessed it — I will find one of them curled up inside the kennel fast asleep. Crazy dogs! 

A messy, loose sketch of my foot

And lastly, my mobile phone

I'm linking up with Paint Party Friday again. To see the work of other participants, click HERE.

I'm having trouble with my hands again. Aaron (son) and I were refurbishing our old dining chairs and I was spraying them with a can of paint.  Well, the pressure of having to hold the nozzle down kept seizing my hand to the point where I would have to swap the spray-can back and forth between hands repeatedly. Now, I'm feeling quite a bit of pain in both my hands, particularly the right one. I'm finding it difficult to do simple tasks like opening or closing a peg, squeezing out toothpaste, lifting the water jug, using hairspray type nozzles, etc. I'm hoping it's just muscular as the pain travels all the way up to my elbow. Either that or arthritis.

I haven't had much luck with my hands over the past five years. My regular readers will know that I had carpal tunnel surgery on both hands last year at different times due to long term issues.  I then went and fell in a puddle of water at a local shopping centre a few months after the surgery on my left hand which happened to take the brunt of the fall. Major OUCH!

I'm hoping the pain will settle down soon with a bit of rest.

Have a lovely weekend, everyone.  I hope those of you suffering our heatwave conditions somehow manage to stay cool.

Some sketches from the week

Another busy week is almost over.  I had a few appointments this week — one of them being a full Lung Function test which was not the most pleasant of tests. I hated having a clamp on my nose for one thing.  The test went for an hour and totally drained me to the point that I no sooner got home than I zonked right out on the couch for a couple of hours. I never sleep throughout the day. It was like I had no energy left in me at all. Have any of you had one of those tests done?  I had both a Spirometry and a Plethysmography done.  I (my lungs) have been feeling out of sorts since having the test done and I don't know if this is normal.

I managed to squeeze in some time for sketching despite the busy week.

Below, was the first pass of watercolour after doing the initial sketch in pen. 

Second pass of watercolour 

Final pass with more pen detailing 

Highlights were done with a POSCA white acrylic pen

My metal water bottle

A wooden pendant that I wear a lot

I'm linking up to Paint Party Friday again. To see the work of the week's participants, click HERE.

More daily sketches

No relief yet from this dreadful heat and humidity. Someone, please pack up some snow and send it my way because I sure could use some cooling down.

The daily sketching continues regardless of me melting away...

Picking up from where I left off in the previous post, this sketch is a bit of practice in sketching trees with ink/pen.

Twinings teas have a new flavour — Peppermint and Spearment — and I got some when I picked out my free teas after I won one of the Twinings' Tea Chests. Nice and refreshing!

And this is our favourite brand of peanut butter. Mayvers Peanut Butter is all natural made solely with peanuts and a little salt. No extra oil or sugars are added.

I've been wanting to sketch this ornamental Chinese Garden Lantern for a while now. It's surrounded by Snake Plants a.k.a. Mother-in-Law's Tongue. 

And lastly, a quick sketch of my Gloria Jean's coffee using LAMY pen with water-soluble ink.

I'm linking up to Paint Party Friday again this week. 

To see the work of this week's participants, click HERE.

Sketching and decluttering

We have been sweltering in high heat and humidity this past week. As we don't have the luxury of air-conditioning, it feels like we are living in a sauna. The nights have been hot and humid too so no relief there. Winter can't come soon enough for me.

I've been blending up some smoothies to help ease our discomfort from the heat. SO delicious!

Strawberry, banana with coconut milk

Berry, banana with soy milk

The daily sketching continues and these are the ones I have photographed so far. 

My tiny bag which is an ideal size for my mobile phone and keys. 

Ink and watercolour

My favourite character on Criminal Minds - Dr. Spencer Reid - played by Matthew Gray Gubler. 

Pen sketch with a wee touch of graphite for subtle shading

One of my Lamy Safari fountain pens which I had to soak and clean as it had dried up. 

Ink and watercolour

Refilled the Lamy Safari with Lamy water-soluble ink. 

Ink sketch

One of my small travel watercolour palettes. 

Ink and watercolour

It's been quite a while since I've been able to participate but I'm linking up with the Paint Party Friday group today. To see the work of other participants for this week, click HERE.

On top of sketching, I did more decluttering. I sorted through more of my books and donated quite a few. I have a lot of art magazines and instructional art books (some are pictured below) that I no longer want so I think I might put them up on Gumtree for sale. 

Tomorrow, I will be tackling my art studio/space. I organised it a while back but I have way too much stuff so I need to make some tough decisions. 

My kitchen rules....

I was thrilled to go back to skool this morning. 

Danny Gregory was teacher for the first week of 

the 'SEEING' course at Sketchbook Skool. 

I can't wait to get started on homework but first, 

I needed to finish my homework from the first semester. 

Tommy Kane was such an AWESOME teacher! 

He's a detail man when it comes to sketching so 

that suited me perfectly. 

He also likes to work directly in pen...

me too!

One of our homework assignments was to sketch our kitchen. 

So, this morning, I pulled up a chair and got to work 

on a double page spread in my Moleskine A5 sketchbook...

I had already started adding watercolour when I'd realised that

I hadn't taken a photo of just the plain black and white sketch 

so there is a little colour on this one.

After the initial pen sketch,

I did a watercolour wash....

Then a little coloured pencil for more emphasis....

I'm not sure that I'm fully finished with it yet....
but I did enjoy the process.

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I recently bought a Holcroft Artist's A6 Travelling Journal
at Riot's Arts and Crafts.
It has a flexible Italian-made cover,
 160 pages of acid-free, recycled, quad-ruled, 120gsm paper.
And just like a Moleskine,
it has a pocket for ephemera at the back of the journal,
 a place marker ribbon,
and an elastic enclosure belt.

My first page spread below.

It handled my Uniball Vision ELITE ink pen very well without any bleed-through.
It did buckle quite badly with the wet media but dried reasonably flat,
 also no bleed-through with the watercolours.
All in all, it handled similar to my Moleskine sketchbooks...
but maybe a little more accepting of watercolours.
I think I'm going to enjoy playing in this journal
especially for fast, daily sketches.

Today, I'm linking up to Paint Party Friday.

Sketching chillies

I'm still catching up with Sketchbook Skool klasses. 

I do hope I don't lag behind in Semester 2 which starts July 4.

Jane LaFazio was the teacher for week four
and we were treated to another great klass.

Our homework was to create a sketch using a grid.

I started out with a quick pen sketch 

of my potted chilli plant.

Yes, I DO love chillies! 

The hotter, the better!

Medium:  Pen and watercolours

Paper: Large Moleskine watercolour notebook. Approx. A4 size.

Nothing like having my eyes watering, nose running, and mouth burning 

from a nice Asian/Indian meal with a red-hot chilli heat.  YUM!

I usually pick these fiery red beasts, then freeze them in a ziplock bag ready for use.

Sometimes, I'll put them in a jar of vinegar and let it sit in the fridge for a few weeks to infuse. 

The chilli vinegar is delicious over hot chips...

My mouth started watering as I typed that last sentence. I kid you not!

I've also been known to mash a few of the vinegar chillies among the chips too.
Do you like chilli hot food?

Today, I'm linking up with this week's Paint Party Friday.