What you don't usually get to see

Someone Who Shall Not Be Named asked why I hadn't posted any art for oh, all of six days now.  This is, after all, my Year of Art, and doesn't that mean sketching or working on a painting every single day?

Why, yes it does!  And so I have.  However, just because I sketch something or work on a painting every day doesn't mean the results are worth sharing.  And that's a good thing, because it means I still have plenty of stuff to learn, lots more practice to engage in, and lots of artistic challenges to meet.  Otherwise it would be pretty darned boring, don't you think?

Anyway, I have done stuff every day.  Here are things I did not post but am posting now so you can all see why I didn't post them, and maybe I'll just keep posting whatever I did every day, even if it's merely a 30-second sketch of Truman Sleeping (my go-to drawing when I haven't done anything else by the end of the day).

First, an ink drawing of an owlet, done from a photo on the lovely calendar Mary gave me for Christmas and that hangs on my office wall, the only drawing I did that particular day because it was raining:

I did not post this because it is a little messy and I couldn't get the eye right.

Next is the top of one of my bookcases at home, drawn because it was raining:

I did not share this because it is just a quick sketch of a not-terribly-interesting subject.

And here is a drawing of the treats on the table at a staff meeting, done because I was bored waiting for the meeting to start, and also, it was raining:

I didn't post this because I just didn't feel like it.

You may have noticed a trend here regarding the weather.  I like to draw outdoors.  The stuff I find to draw outdoors is much more interesting to me than the stuff I find indoors, all in all.  Unless I'm inside the Burke Museum.  Thus, when it rains, and I can't draw outside, I do a sketch of whatever is in front of me inside and call it good for the day.  And those things, as you can see, are not generally worth putting on the blog.   Also, the muffins were poppyseed and I don't like poppyseed muffins.

Finally, I also spent the last week working a bit every evening on a watercolor landscape of a Kubota Gardens scene that Did Not Turn Out.   What happened was, there was too much green everywhere.  I should have de-emphasized the greenery in back and emphasized some up front, but by the time I realized it, there was no way to fix it.   Oh, and the rocks are ill-defined, and I could fix that, but this I won't because this is now becoming Scratch Paper (the back side can be used to test color mixes on):

And to think that some people claim that greens are hard to mix.  Hah.  Oh, well.  So it goes.  I do rather like this small section:

There you have it -- why I haven't posted any art for a week.  This coming week I am hoping to get outside!