Time for some COLOR :-)

The other day I was out for a brief walk with Remy.  It was a blustery day, a bit chilly, with dried leaves and bare branches in gray and taupe.

Undoubtedly this is why, when I returned to my studio,  I was in the mood for colorful flowers and fruit (an apple and a couple of pears).  I brought out some Copic markers and ink pads to spread some color :-)

Copic markers and ink.

Ink.

I feel better now :-)

Word art, a MOO, and Remy

Word art from yesterday:

Tickle me pink-ish :-)

And a MOO:

And my boy, Remy, enjoying the sun:

Remy makes me smile <3

Simple sketches

Recently I have been drawn again to simple drawings, focusing on movements that sometimes make the animals look odd.  From one angle a four-footed animal may appear to have only three feet visible or the body position appears awkward:

Ink

In another instance, an expression relies on the turn or tilt of a head or ear:

Ink

Graphite

Slowing down to look closely and carefully is calming and rewarding :-)

Sunny morning

Remy (my golden) and I were sitting on the deck early this morning.  The temperature was 35 degrees F (br-r-r) and Remy was wearing his usual fur and I was in my winter parka; but with the sun shining and no perceptible breeze we were enjoying it. 

Songbirds were chirping and chasing each other and high above I saw dozens and dozens of seagulls soaring.  With the sun lighting them, they looked like pin pricks of moving light in a soft blue sky - just wonderful.  I live in Colorado and I occasionally spot seagulls but never so many as this morning.

And on a completely different subject - I am a few pages into my new art journal.  This is a little sketch from today:

Sharpie pens.

Verve

Here's some word art that originated in my art journal a few days ago.  I was listening to a lecture and the word became a doodle and then this:

Paint pen, Sharpie, gel pens

Smudgies

As I've mentioned, I am taking a year-long class, "Y is for Yellow" from Carla Sonheim. 

In one of the class exercises we had to make a smudge mark with an animal in mind.  Next step, using as few lines as possible, define the animal.  I enjoyed this lesson; it is a challenge to use as few elements as possible to capture a figure or object.

These are my smudgies:

Aardvark

Caracal

Hippo

Wildebeest

Wild Pig

All of them were drawn using pastels and ink.  They are a lot of fun to do :-)

Oddly egg-y

This sketch of flowers is from my art journal:

The Egg Flowers (ink, colored pencil)

The blossoms began as randomly placed yellow marker circles.  Next I surrounded each one with jagged "blossom" heads.  I let them sit that way because I thought, "my, my, they look like eggs, now what?"   I felt a bit unsettled with the visual/linguistic combination of egg and flowers.  O, I should explain, I am a little queasy around eggs that are out of the shell - I just am :-)

I came back in a few and added the leaves, stems, and ground.  This is what I love about daily art journaling - it's very easy to take a chance, explore, and experiment.  I find the greatest value in executing the daily practice.  I wrote more about it in this blog post (Carla Sonheim's art journal layout, Cat Bennett's class, Making Art a Practice).

New MOOdle on Monday and patterns

My most recent MOOdle:

From my inner grammar nerd :-)

I recently converted to the Oxford comma because it just made sense to me.  And in recognition of this shift, I thought to myself, "why not" and created a MOOdle.

Yesterday I used the MISC section of my art journal to draw these random patterns:

I think they're colorful and have a sense of humor :-)