A little more doodling

I did one more wacky doodle last week, and now I think I'm all doodled out, at least for a while.  This final piece can be looked at in any of four ways, so I'm including all four views:

This is only doodle I tried to color in, which I think was mostly successful:

Other than that, I mostly hung around the house puttering about, except for one Urban Sketch group outing.  We met at the local art gallery, where I drew a display of ceramic art.

The Hounds and I have been enjoying lazing around the house very much.  Here is Truman after experiencing a bit of static electricity thanks to the plush blanket on the sofa, which he loves to roll around on.

I hope everyone out there has a happy Thanksgiving!

Out of Control Art

This past week I did some doodling.  It got a little out of control, which you will soon see.  But first, I did some non-out-of-control art in watercolor.

My issue, as you may remember from previous posts, was coming up with artistic subject matter.  Usually I just go outside and find something I want to draw, and as we know, this doesn't work as well when it's forty degrees or raining or when leaves are being blown into your face.  So I went in search of pretty pictures to use in the comfort of my home, and at the library book shop I found a magazine about Britain.  Yay!

After all that ink drawing in October, I decided to ditch the pens and do watercolor only, at least for a few days.  The lovely English home above just called out to be painted, as did the coastline of northern Scotland below:

Then someone donated a calendar to the bookshop, with lovely bird photos, so I did this Blue Jay next:

And that was it for my watercolor-only experiment.  I missed the pens!  I still couldn't think of anything to draw, though, and so one morning I simply sat down and started doodling.  The doodle began with a little doorway and some stairs, and then it kept growing and growing and getting odder and odder and I kept adding one peculiar bit after another until I wound up with whatever this is:

[CLICK on PICTURE for clearer view]

What can I say?  It's a doodle on overdrive.  I put in things that I like -- lighthouses, hot air balloons, a bird, plants, bricks...it was completely unplanned, with no preliminary pencil sketching at all.  And I had a ton of fun.  It reminded me of wacky stuff I used to do way back in grade school when I was bored in class, which was a lot of the time, although back then there would have been dinosaurs.

Anyway, I had such fun with it that the next day I did it again!  This time I started in the upper left corner with a roof line and a wacky claw, and then just kept going wherever it decided to go.  I decided it would be a cross-section of a bizarre house -- there's a bedroom, a bath, a kitchen, a library...and of course, you can't have a bizarre house without an owl, a frog, a hybrid lizard-fish, and plumbing that turns into a tree root...right?  Right!

Now I'm thinking of doing one in color -- whee!

And I'm happy to have found something to draw when I can't get outside -- all I have to do is step inside my own wacky mind.

A Little Scottish Rock

Last week I gave a tour of my area to a rock that came from Scotland.  How's that, you ask?  Well, I'll tell you!

Vivian Swift is an author/illustrator (When Wanderers Cease to Roam; Le Road Trip; Gardens of Awe and Folly) from Long Island, NY.  I love her work and follow her blog.  Earlier this year, Vivian went to Scotland, and while in the town of Stromness she found a painted rock.  One side was blue with white lettering ("Shh...I'm hiding") and the other side said "Stromness Rocks" with a Facebook logo. 

This is a thing in many places around the world -- people paint rocks, leave them in public places, and strangers who find them can either keep them or put them somewhere new, and they post about it on social media. 

Vivian decided to take the rock that she found back to Long Island, and then she asked for volunteers to "host" it on a U.S. tour.  She mailed the rock to the first host, who took photos of it at local sights, and then mailed it on to the next person.  Eventually it will get back to Vivian, who will make a scrapbook to send the rock with back to Stromness in Scotland.  Okay, it's a bit of an odd thing to do, but hey, why not?

Above is the rock in front of the conning tower of a nuclear submarine -- one of Richland's attractions.  It was the first submarine to circumnavigate the world completely submerged. 

Yes, I volunteered to host the rock from Stromness.  It reached me last Monday, and I showed it around the area as best I could.  I took it with me to my volunteer gig at the Friends of the Library book shop.

Vivian's town also has such a shop, which she co-manages.

The next day I drove it 68 miles north to Vantage, WA to see the ancient rock carvings at the Gingko Petrified Forest State Park.

And I posed it on one of the petrified tree stumps overlooking the Columbia River Gorge.

There's a gem and rock shop in Vantage, with dinosaur statues out front.  I had to stop there!

The little blue rock is hiding nicely among these agates:

The next day I tootled on over to the local museum.

It has a natural history section:

Which has a lot of information about the ice-age floods that carved out our unique region:

Over in the history section about the role the area played in the Manhattan Project, there's a Geiger counter display.  I used the wand there to check the rock's radioactivity, which luckily registered hardly at all.

The next day I took it to see our vintage 1949 Uptown Shopping Center:

 And down at our main park, I spotted one of the paddle wheel riverboats that ply our waters:

And later I went to the Atomic Lanes bowling alley to show the rock how small town Americans entertain themselves:

It was a fun and silly little adventure, which I enjoyed participating in, and I hope to get a copy of the scrapbook someday.

In Which I Fail to Create Art, Mostly

First, the temps here barely broke 40 degrees for most of last week, which made me loath to step outside at all.  Dog walks were quick and chilly.  Outdoor sketch adventures were entirely out of the picture.  And I had to bundle up like Scott of the Antarctic to rake and bag the darn leaves that keep blowing into my yard.  In other words, BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!

So I thought it would be good to make art indoors.  I had this idea about painting a large (for me, that is -- which is 16 x 20") and colorful acrylic painting to go with the very large and very colorful acrylic painting that I bought recently.  After several days of messing about with that, I discovered a few things.

1.  I didn't have any idea what to paint.
2.  I didn't have any clue how to paint it even if I figured out what the subject was.
3.  I don't really like painting with acrylics. 

This turned out to be a problem.  I am not sharing the messy, ugly, crappy effort that was sort of a scene with rolling hills and trees with a puffy cloud sky.  Trust me, you are better off without seeing it.  I know I am, which is why it now sits in the back of a closet far far away.

Then I did this:

This is watercolor.  I like painting in watercolor.  It works for me.  Why am I not painting a colorful large picture with watercolor?  Well, because I wanted something for the wall, and to display watercolors, you have to mat them and frame them and I didn't want that particular look.  The large colorful acrylic painting I bought is on stretched canvas, unframed, with the sides painted so you can just hang it on the wall as is.  A matted and framed painting would look odd next to it, if you ask me.

Imagine my happiness, then, when I discovered that you don't have to frame a watercolor!

See that?  It's watercolor paper glued to a wood frame!  You can just hang it on the wall as it is!  Aha!

I tested it out, as you can see above, on a smaller 8x10" panel, and having found success, decided that was the way to go for the bigger piece.  I ordered two more panels, one 9x12" and one 11x14".  They should arrive soon, and then we shall see if my new plan works. 

Otherwise, the only artistic effort I made last week involved a little bird.  My friend Mary sent me a photo of a slightly cranky looking fledgling with a note saying, "Why don't you paint me?"  So I did.

It made me happy, because drawing in ink and painting in watercolor works for me (well, most of them time...) and that's what I should stick to. 

Of course, I still need to figure out what to paint for those larger pieces. 

Argh.