An Arty Week and a Doggy Week

It rained a lot last week.

I entertained myself by messing about with a tube of indigo watercolor paint -- a very deep, rich color that is fun to play with using wet-in-wet techniques.  This is just playing to see what effects I could come up with:

It would work great for stormy skies, or in the next one, maybe a mysterious forest.

In this one, I tried to create a kind of Chinese-style landscape:

It rained a LOT.  The next thing I did to entertain myself was to take an online class on craftsy.com
called "Dynamic Detail in Pen, Ink, and Watercolor".  The fellow who teaches it, Steven Reddy, has a distinctive style using contour ink drawings, various gradations of ink washes to add value, and a final layer of watercolor.  Then he adds hatch marks in pen at the end.

It's not my style of drawing/painting, but I enjoyed the course and picked up a few new tips. 

On Friday, Nicole and Tina and I joined the Seattle Urban Sketcher group at the Burke Museum on the UW campus for a couple of hours of drawing fun.

Steven Reddy lives in Seattle and is a member of the group, and he turned up that day, so I was able to show him the one drawing I did in which I used a few of his tips and techniques. 

We weren't allowed to use liquids inside the museum, so instead of ink washes, I used three different shades of gray ink-brush pens.  Mr. Reddy did the same thing, and we compared brush pens, and he liked the way mine worked a lot better than his and plans to get some of my brand (Faber-Castell). 

On Sunday it was both rainy and quite windy.  Nicole and Tina came over to my place for a cozy afternoon of still-life sketching, playing/testing out with new materials, and watching some art technique videos.    This was just messing around with granulating watercolors:

Nicole brought along her hurdy-gurdy, which she put together from a kit (from the same company, UGears, that I did my little theater kit from).  It actually plays--Nicole demonstrated it!  I tried to draw it but the design was so complex that about halfway through I gave up trying to get all the details.

And now for a big doggy update.  Here is Truman at the pet store, annoyed at my attempt to accessorize him, and blissfully unaware of the huge change that is about to happen in his life.

And here is the huge change:

This is Thumper, a male longhaired dapple dachshund puppy.

He is eight weeks old, and assuming all goes well with his vet check up, in two weeks he will come to Dog End to be Truman's new buddy!

Oh boy, puppy training!  Housebreaking!  Teething!  Craziness!   And most of all, extreme adorableness!!  Whee!!!!

Truman (As Always), a Little Art, and a Lot of Wind

When I can't get out and about because of the weather, I can always snap photos of Truman, who is obligingly photogenic.  Here he is waiting patiently for his buddy Winston to come over:

He drapes himself over the armchair in such a ridiculous manner that I suspect he is part cat.

And here he is at Meadowbrook Pond Park, wondering, as usual, when we are going to turn around to go home:

There was a lovely Pied-billed Grebe on the pond:

And autumn foliage all around:

The weather prevented me from going out sketching, as it no doubt will for many months to come.  So I did a couple of practice pieces indoors, from photos.  These were from my journey to Great Britain back in 1982.

The beach at Aberystwyth in Wales:

Part of the gardens at Blenheim Palace:

And now for a more mundane update:  yard improvement occurred last week.  Back in October there was a very windy day here, and large sections of a shrub by my carport broke off, landing on the neighbor's driveway.  The shrub was a good 15 feet long and 15 feet high -- and even after the huge branches broke off, parts of it were still threatening to do more damage. 

So I forked over some money to a landscaping crew to take it out, along with a whole lot of blackberry and ivy vines.  Here is what the area looked like before they arrived:

And here it is afterwards:

The "before" view from inside the carport:

After:

My neighbor is a good guy who was very helpful about cleaning up the mess on his side.  I'm glad he can park his car safely in his own driveway now. 

This is how Truman felt about strange people making lots of noise in his driveway when the landscaping crew was here:

Winston was not terribly concerned.

Once again there is rain in the forecast for every day this week.  I signed up for an online art class that I've been wanting to take for some time:  Dynamic Detail in Pen, Ink, & Watercolor, taught by one of our own local urban sketchers.  It went on sale for $15 last week, which made me ever so happy.

So I hope that keeps me occupied on these rainy gray days.

I Didn't Sketch A Thing This Week

I haven't sketched anything since a week ago Sunday.  Some of my friends manage to sketch inside, working from photos, but I just don't find that very inspiring.  I want to go out, but it's too chilly.  Luckily, it wasn't too chilly for dog walks.

Truman and I visited our favorite walking park, Magnuson (as opposed to our favorite birding park, the Montlake Fill).  We had a lovely long walk during one of the few respites from the rain.

There were Buffleheads on the ponds.  Why are they called Buffleheads?  What is a "buffle", anyway?

There's no such thing.  They were originally called "Buffaloheads" back in the day.  This somehow got shortened to Bufflehead, perhaps when there were no longer so many buffalos around to compare them to.

This is one of the park's many art installations - a series of giant steps up a small hill near the boat launch area.  Truman did not climb up or down these steps.  He had a little help in posing.

Lots of autumn leaves still falling....

Another downside to autumn weather is that it reduces the number of lunch time visits Truman gets from his buddies Winston and Chloe.  Their human walks them over twice a week, but only if it's nice enough.  We got just one visit last week -- here is Tru waiting anxiously for their arrival.

He loves romping with his best bud Winston.

Afterwards they enjoyed lounging on the sofa.

So instead of sketching, I found another way to entertain myself indoors.  My friend Nicole discovered a new company that makes wooden toys with moving parts, called UGears.  She bought a rather complex kit and seemed to be enjoying it, so I decided to get a much smaller, simpler kit to try out.

It was called the Theatre, showing scenes from a stage, and it had 70 pieces to put together.

The instructions were nice and clear, and the quality of the pieces was excellent.  However, it used toothpicks as axles, which I had to push through the center of multiple gears, and they simply would not fit.

The instructions recommended using candle wax to help get the toothpicks through, but even that didn't work.  I broke about half of the toothpicks they provided.

Eventually, after much struggling, I managed to shove them through with carefully controlled brute force.  I've since learned that some of their kits don't bother with the evil toothpick axles.  I will definitely avoid them if I get another one.

I also managed to put a couple of pieces in the wrong way while trying to put it all together, but I did get it put together.

Not only that, it actually turns the way it is supposed to turn!  Miracle!

There is rain in the forecast for every day this week.  I think I'd better find something inspirational to draw indoors.

And Now Come the Dark Times

The 2017 baseball season ended this past week, and I am sad.  What do I watch on TV now?  Nothing.  Well, maybe a little football, which is not satisfying in the slightest, but at least it's not basketball.

The Dark Times of No Baseball coincide with the Dark Times of Seattle weather, when it is too gray or too wet or too windy or too cold to go outside, where I like to be.  On one such day, I had Winston and Chloe over, and here is how we spent our time:

The pillow above was a gift from my neighbor -- it says, "A room without books is like a body without a soul."  (Cicero)

On one day last week it was sunny enough to go out -- but not warm enough.  I took a few pics of the last interesting stuff in my garden for the year:

Purple Smoke Tree 

Roses still blooming! 

 Hounds

A few rocks that I painted

On Friday it SNOWED for four hours.  Here is Truman expressing his opinion of his snow jacket:

On Saturday I co-lead a field trip at the Montlake Fill for Connie's intermediate birding class -- it was 35 degrees when we started at 8am, and it was 35 degrees when we ended at 10am.  It was so cold I didn't even want to take my camera with me.  Despite thermal undergarments, layers of clothing, hand and foot warmers, muffler, ski gloves, and Minnesota Winter Hat, I was still too cold after the first hour and by the time I got back to my car, I was worried I wouldn't be able to drive because I could barely feel my feet.  It's too early for this sort of thing!

At least we had good birds --  a Eurasian Wigeon among the regular American Wigeons, a few Ring-necked Ducks, a Hooded Merganser, Bald Eagle fly-bys to startle the large rafts of coots, and a Merlin that conveniently perched a few feet from a Cooper's Hawk for a nice class teaching moment.  But please stop me before I volunteer for this sort of thing again.

On Sunday, Tina and I went to Third Place Commons to do some nice, warm, indoor sketching.  It was nice to be comfortable, but not so nice regarding subject matter.  Mostly, it was People, and you know know much I enjoy sketching People.  In fact, I dislike it so much that I managed to draw one of the restaurants without any people at all even though they were moving in and out of my view:

Unfortunately, there just wasn't anything else there I wanted to draw, and Tina wasn't finished yet, so I was forced to do People.  And as is always the case, they kept moving on me.  I started one sketch, and five seconds later the person got up and left.  I started another one, and the person was joined by a second person who blocked my view of the first one.  Another one kept uncrossing and recrossing her legs, another kept moving her arms about -- people just do not cooperate!

Tina finished her sketch and I suggested going downstairs to draw the colorful gumball machines -- a spot where there are few people about.  We both drew the machines, and then she put an octopus on top of hers.

Yes, that's right -- an octopus.  You see, she recently took a class on drawing from one's imagination, and one assignment involved creating an imaginary creature that you could put into drawings or make up stuff for it to do -- and she created Toby the Octopus.  Toby now appears in many of her sketches (up in the Common Room, she drew a set of giant chess pieces there, and had Toby playing chess with them).   In her gumball drawing, Toby proudly sat atop the machines, holding a shiny coin in one arm.

My drawing looked boring in comparison, and I said so.  "Well," Tina replied, "put your own  imaginary creature in it -- how about a bird, like an owl?"

So I put an owl on top of the gumball machines.  "I think you should paint him purple," Tina suggested.  Well, I wanted at least some creative control over my own drawing, so I added a little rosy color to the purple, named him Oswald, and called it good.

Oswald the Owl just might turn up in more sketches in the future -- keep an eye out for him!