Books Read: 2021

In 2021, I read 60 books:  34 nonfiction, 26 fiction.  Thirteen were re-reads.

FICTION

Sherlock Holmes (A. Conan Doyle), all of which were re-reads:

A Study in Scarlet

The Sign of Four

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes

The Hound of the Baskervilles

Sherlock Holmes pastiches:

The Seven-Per-Cent Solution (Nicholas Meyer), a re-read  Pretty good

The Monster of St. Marylebone (Wayne Worcester)  Not that good

The Revenant of Thraxton Hall (Vaughn Entwistle) Passable

The Thistle of Scotland (L.B. Greenwood)  Pedestrian

The Haunting of Torre Abbey (Carole Bugge)  Passable

Other Mysteries

A Trick of the Light (Louise Penny)  Annoying.  I am done with this series.

Dead as a Dodo (Jane Langton)  Pretty good

The Sibyl in Her Grave (Sarah Caudwell) a re-read  Good stuff

Artists in Crime (Ngaio Marsh) a re-read  A favorite

Death Notes  (Ruth Rendell)  Pretty good

From Doon with Death  (Ruth Rendell)  Passable

Speaker of Mandarin  (Ruth Rendell)  So-so

Death of an Englishman (Magdalen Nabb)  Forgettable

The Incredible Crime  (Lois Austen-Leigh)  Also forgettable

I Am Half-Sick of Shadows (Alan Bradley)  a re-read  A favorite series

Other Fiction

The Portable Veblen (Elizabeth McKenzie)  Eccentric and charming

Excellent Women  (Barbara Pym)  Quite enjoyable

Some Tame Gazelle  (Barbara Pym)  Good

Jane and Prudence (Barbara Pym)  not quite up there

Piranesi  (Susanna Clarke)  most unusual fantasy, loved it

Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell (Susanna Clarke) re-read  excellent stuff

NONFICTION

Three re-reads of delightful mid-century humor and gardening by Beverley Nichols):

Merry Hall

Laughter on the Stairs

Sunlight on the Lawn

The Cards Can't Lie (Alice Hutton)  History of tarot decks; rather dull.

Secrets of a Wildlife Watcher (Jim Arnosky)  Aimed at youngsters but nice drawings

Images of America: The Manhattan Project at Hanford Site

The Sherlock Holmes Scrapbook (Peter Haining, editor)

The Hanford Reach (Susan Zwinger)

American Visions: The Epic History of Art in America (Robert Hughes)

The World of Copley (Time-Life World of Art series)

The World of Turner (ditto)

Johann Sebastian Bach (Hannsdieter Wohlfarth)

No Vulgar Hotel (Judith Martin) Musings on Venice; could have been better

The Art of Practicing (Madeline Bruser) Music practice advice

How to Live Like a Lord without Really Trying (Shepherd Mead)  humor

Reading the OED (Ammon Shea) I liked this one quite a bit

The War of Art (Steven Pressfield) Can't remember a thing about it

The World of James McNeill Whistler (Horace Gregory)

The Secret Lives of Color (Kassia St. Clair)  Fun stuff

The Most Obliging Man in Europe (Christopher Platt) about Oxford servants; a bit dull

The History of the Snowman (Bob Eckstein)  odd little history book

Vanished Smile: The Mysterious Theft of the Mona Lisa (R. A. Scotti)

Calling Bullshit (Carl Bergstrom; Jevin West) The use and misuse of data; good

Farewell in Splendor (Jerrold Packard) Queen Victoria's last days; overwritten

A Strange Business (James Hamilton) 19th-century art and business in U.K.; too dull

Orchid Fever (Eric Hansen)  fun look at obsessive orchid fans

Mystery: A Seduction, A Strategy, A Solution (Jonah Lester) musings on mystery and its uses

Rooted (Lyanda Haupt) Excellent thoughts on nature

The Crooked Path: An Introduction to Traditional Witchcraft (Kelden)

The Bookseller of Florence (Ross King) Good biography/history (15th-century)

The Real Witches' Handbook (Kate West)

The Pagan Dream of the Renaissance (Joscelyn Godwin)

The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows (John Koenig)  fun book of invented words

And my favorite book of 2021:

Leonardo da Vinci (Walter Isaacson) one of the best biographies I've ever read

There are plenty of books on my To Be Read pile for the coming year.  Time to get started!

Holiday Hiatus

 I'm taking a brief break from this blog until the New Year.  A specific return date depends on a) warmer weather so I can get out and about (unlikely) or b) better artistic efforts (currently not happening).  

What can I say -- nothing is happening here!  (Which I often think of as a good thing, all in all.)  No walks, no birding, and the sketch sessions last week proved utterly dreadful.  Sometimes the magic works, and well, sometimes it's total rubbish.

One thing I can always rely on, however, is adorable dachshunds:

Pippin always hogs the limelight in this department, as he tends to be tons more photogenic than poor Truman.

He has also hogged Truman's favorite toy here, a stuffed alligator:

Meanwhile, here is Truman, feeling grumpy and left out:

BONUS:  Here is a link to a very short clip of Pippin watching my friend Mary's cat Grace on TV:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/mizmak/51759569549/in/dateposted/

That's all for now.  May you all enjoy whatever holiday you celebrate at this time of year!

Back to the Colored Pencils

 Well, it's been quite some time since I did a colored pencil portrait.  I thought that I'd already done every single possible Crowley or Aziraphale (from Good Omens, in case you've been away from this blog for the past two years and have no idea what I'm obsessed by).  I'd drawn them individually, together, in contemporary scenes, in most of the historical scenes...what could possibly be left?

Then one day it occurred to me that most of these pieces were basically direct copies of stills from the show, or slight manipulations of those, and that only a few were more original--that is, an idea for a new image not from the show.  So I hunted through my ginormous file of saved images and found this photo of Crowley that does not appear on screen--it wound up on the cutting-room floor but someone found it and posted it for all of us fans to enjoy:

I was drawn to his expression.  It's from the scene where he's wondering where he can go to escape Earth's imminent destruction, and failing.  He then dramatically questions why he was cast out from Heaven.  Good stuff!  

My sister says she likes learning about my process, so guess what?  Thanks to her, you are in for a lot of photos showing how I got from Point A (the pic above) to the final piece.  Don't you feel fortunate?

First, I looked through hundreds of photos seeking further inspiration, and when I ran across this promo pic, I thought, "Wings!  I could draw him with wings!"

But while those wings are very cool, I had trouble sketching the head in Pic 1 on Pic 2's body due to the unfortunate arm/hand in the way, so next I found another promo photo with a similar stance:

Much better, and I did want him in his iconic jacket with the red collar, rather than just the thin shirt he's wearing in Pic 1.  So all I had to do was draw the first head onto this body and add the wings from Pic 2.  It was at this point that I thought about what he's feeling, about his unintended Fall, and suddenly got an original idea for once--why not reflect that by shading his wings from white to gray to black to echo his transition from angel to demon?

So it was back to the reference photos, where I found these lovely wings on our favorite angel:

Now I had all the reference photos needed to create this portrait.  I opted to use colored pencils because my efforts with oils had gone nowhere but downhill after the da Vinci angel.  Sigh.  Also, I had noticed my eyes feeling puffy and irritated while painting, and decided to wait until Spring to pursue further studies, when I can open a window for ventilation.

It was ever so much fun to return to the pencils, which I enjoy immensely.  You may recall (or more likely, not) that one of the cool things about this medium is the way the pencil marks can be turned partly liquid by using a solvent such as oil or mineral spirits.  This makes the process a blend of drawing and painting.  

For example, here is Crowley with just colored pencil laid in:

There are layers -- at least six colors on the face, and four on the hair.  The thing I've had fun learning is how to layer the colors such that when the solvent is added (with a brush), the colors blend in just the right way to create depth:

I've experimented a lot over the past two years with various combinations.  My initial efforts used lighter colors first, then the darker colors on top, but I've more recently discovered that laying down the darker layers first with the lighter on top actually works better.  This is completely opposite of the way I do watercolors (light to dark), and different from acrylic/oil painting (where I put down the middle tones first, then add shadows and highlights).  

Here you can see another example of the wonderful magic that happens when solvent is added to colored pencil -- check out the right wing:

There are six layers here (a white, three grays, a red, and a black).  Look at how dramatically different the pencil colors on top are from the mixed-with-solvent (oil) area in the middle:

They don't even look like the same colors!  Yet there is nothing added to those rough pencil marks other than a bit of oil.  It's so much fun to see what will happen, because often I don't know--I'm just making educated guesses and keeping my fingers crossed.

Well, I guess you have suffered enough, so I'll leave out the gazillion other steps in this process (which involve smoothing, adding more color, doing more blending, and burnishing) and just cut to the final piece, which I'm quite happy with:

Crowley contemplating his Fall from Heaven

Okay, now there must be cute dachshund pics, right?  Right!

Truman went to the groomer this past week, and he looks ever so spiffy now:

When he got home, Pippin expressed some envy of Truman's bandana, so I let him wear it for a while:

He is, of course, as super adorable as always:

 Okay, back to the art!  We did our usual two Zoom sketch sessions, and they weren't half-bad!

The first was a black-and-white photo of a bell, which we liked because of the shadow, and because it was nice and simple (we often choose things are way too complex). I used three gray-toned water-soluble brush pens, and a little bit of pen:

For the second session, we chose a lovely marsh scene which was certainly more complex, and required a lot of preliminary thought into what order to lay down the watercolors.  I also used a little bit of colored pencil here and there:

It was quite the creative week here!

That's all for now.  May you all have a lovely time out there!

Birds! And more birds!

 I had a birdy week, or at least, two days were very full of birds.  Thousands of birds, in fact.

Every year thousands of Snow Geese migrate this way from Alaska and northern Canada, and they spend November through March in various places throughout the northern U.S.

One place they like is the McNary National Wildlife Refuge in Burbank, just a short drive away.

We had several days of 60-65 degree weather, so on one of them I headed over there, and found the geese right away (sometimes they like to hide farther from the refuge where it's hard to see them).

I got lots of great views of the birds, and then Truman and Pippin and I walked the 3-mile trail at the Refuge.

Then we returned to the nearby field where the Snow Geese were flying in and out for a little more viewing of these wonderful birds.

It was quite a lovely outing all round.

The next day I made an utterly impromptu drive over to Columbia Park to see what the road looked like now -- it has had construction going on for a year or more, making it hard to visit.  The grand opening of the road happened recently and as far as I could tell, it mostly involved putting in a turning lane in spots and adding some sidewalks.  Nothing terribly exciting or different.

So after checking out all this unexciting roadwork, I stopped at the marina to see if any interesting gulls were about, which there weren't, but there were two Belted Kingfishers having an aerial altercation of some import.  Apparently they did not care for each other much, as they spent a good half hour chasing each other about and dive-bombing each other until one finally gave up and flew away.  

While I don't have the sort of camera that can take pictures of small birds zooming fast in complex flight patterns, I do have one that can snap photos of birds who finally land, as the victor did:

This is a female kingfisher, denoted by the rusty breast/chest coloring.  

She was being quite vocal about her disapproval of the interloper.

And then I got the standard "What are you looking at?"  pose:

A fun time indeed, and not something I'd planned on at all -- sometimes the bird magic just happens!

As for art, our Wednesday sketch session proved disastrous.  We chose an extremely colorful view of a Japanese building and garden -- WAY too colorful, and not only was my effort so awful that I refuse to share it, but was so incredibly bad that I threw it away.  Ptui.

Thankfully, for the Friday session we chose a much saner picture to work from, and I loved every minute of it, and really like the result, too!  This is a landscape in Namibia, rendered in watercolor:

Whew.  I'm always happy when at least one of my efforts turns out all right.

And that's all the excitement from here for now.   Have a great week and stay safe out there!

No New Oil Painting This Week

 I'm waiting for art supplies to arrive before tackling more oil painting.  Every time I order supplies, which the company sends via FedEx, I get a message with a tracking number that says my package will arrive on a certain date, and then every single time, the package does not arrive on that date.  Instead, it suddenly vanishes into a black hole called "delivery information pending".  

And then it arrives the next day or the day after.  Go figure.  

So, in the meantime, as I await the supplies needed to try more oil painting, have a cute bird to look at:

This is a Horned Grebe, one of our regular Winter visitors, hanging out on the Columbia River.  Here it is again, preening those hard-to-reach spots:

And here it is giving me one of those What are you looking at expressions:

As for the group sketch sessions, I managed to do things that I liked well enough to share.  Yay.

The first is a geological formation known as Blackchurch Rock on the coast of county Devon, UK.  I used watercolor and water-soluble ink pens, and was pretty happy with the reflection:

The second one was a narrow street somewhere in France, with a lot of shop signs and a tricky drain pipe, not to mention a bit of challenging perspective.  I used ink and watercolor:

It's still warm enough for walking, and the Hounds and I got out to Columbia Point, where we haven't been for a while.  There was a bit of lovely autumnal color in the area where the fire swept through last Spring:

Pippin and Truman enjoyed the walk, even though Truman couldn't use his beloved stroller on the rocky path:

Not a terribly exciting week all in all, but these days, that is a fine thing indeed!

Have a good week out there, everyone!

In Which I Tackle da Vinci

This post will be solely about oil painting, and specifically about copying an angel painted by Leonardo da Vinci.  You see, when I decide to tackle something new, I tend not to make it easy on myself.  Perhaps this is not the best strategy, but once in a while it works out just fine.

The new thing (sort of) is water-mixable oil paints.  These have been around for a few decades now, and I dimly recall trying them in the early 1990s.  I hated them, though I don't remember clearly why. Recently, I tried using traditional oils with their troublesome solvents, which made me unhappy, too.  But then I heard some folks claim that water-mixable oils had improved greatly, so I opted to give them another try, with Holbein Duo Aqua paints.

Boy howdy, were those folks right!

What I tested them out on was an angel from this painting, da Vinci's Virgin of the Rocks

Here's the close-up of the angel figure that I worked from:

Here I'm starting an underpainting after drawing the figure on an 11x14" hardboard panel (that I applied a layer of gesso to).

The drawing is not totally accurate but then, who can copy da Vinci?  The point was not to slavishly copy the figure, but to test out the oil paint by using traditional oil techniques, and who better to represent those than Leonardo?  

So one traditional oil painting technique is the underpainting, in which one figures out the range of light/dark values in the piece by rendering it in monochrome.  Most often this is done with grays or browns.  I chose to use burnt umber.

I liked the way the paint handled -- it blended easily with just water for thinning, though Holbein does make quite a few mediums to be used expressly with its water-mixable oils.  These can be added to increase transparency, glossiness, and/or ease of blending.  I've ordered some to try out next time.

Traditional oils take a long time to dry, but these water-mixable ones dry more quickly, and after just 24 hours, the underpainting was ready for color layers. I had not purchased many colors -- just primary red, yellow, blue, and two browns (burnt umber and burnt sienna), and white.  From these one ought to be able to make pretty much any color.  Luckily, the original painting was not all that colorful (at least, not the angel), so it wasn't difficult to mix what I needed.

I had the most trouble with the hair.  Da Vinci is known for his love of painting curls, and they were always incredibly complex in terms of shape and lighting, and there was no way I could match his skill in rendering them.  I opted to aim more for suggestion than detail.

The next day, a disaster occurred!  I tried to mix the facial colors by using the traditional method, which involves red + yellow + white for lighter values, with a touch of blue to tone down the vividness, and red + yellow + just a little blue for darker values.  The mixes looked fine on the palette but when I applied them to the painting, they looked awful.  By the time I realized how much I hated the colors, I'd covered the whole face.  Aiiee!

I wound up lifting off that paint layer with paper towels.  The dampness of the paint and the subsequent harsh removal adversely affected the underpainting, and I lost quite a bit of the facial features, which I then had to reconstruct to the best of my ability.  The portrait now strayed farther from da Vinci's, but I wasn't unhappy with it -- in fact, I rather liked how the angel looked slightly more androgynous in my version.  Angels are, after all, supposed to be genderless, spiritual beings, and this seemed quite appropriate.  

Here is the newer, reconstructed face, with new color added using my own mixture of burnt umber, burnt sienna, and white:

Another traditional technique I tried out was sfumato, which was pretty much invented by da Vinci.  This is a blending of edges -- a softening of the changes in value from one plane to another.  For this I used a mop brush, which is a full and fluffy brush that looks like the ones some people use to apply makeup foundation/powder.  It worked brilliantly, and I was able to get quite subtle gradations in value across the face.

All in all, I'm extremely impressed with these paints.  I suspect the surface also had a lot to do with my success -- I've not been happy painting on canvas in the past, as I don't like the texture showing through.  This hardboard, manufactured by Richeson, is very smooth.  I loved how easily the paint glided onto this surface, and how smoothly the paint blended.  A very enjoyable exercise!  

Here is the finished piece:

Now I just need to figure out what to paint next....Hm.....

Have a lovely week out there, everyone!

When in Doubt, Post Cute Dachshund Pics

 It was a relatively quiet week, with walking and drawing and hanging around with wiener dogs, thusly:

There were a few nice birds now and then on our riverside walks, including Common Loons, who are Winter visitors:

And there were plenty of gulls, including this Ring-billed Gull who gave me the stink-eye:

The sketching was so-so, and seemed overly heavy on trees and other green stuff.  I did this fence with moss-covered rocks piece in ink and watercolor:

For this picture of aspens against a very dark background, I opted to use the Adobe Fresco digital drawing program on the iPad:

The weather cooperated for walking, especially one day when it was mild and sunny and I just couldn't seem to get enough walks in -- I just kept going and going, until I broke my old daily steps/mileage record:

Whee!  Ten miles!!!   In one day!  I was pretty chuffed about that.  And just a little tired at the end of the day -- I slept very well that night.

And now for more cute dachshund pics!  We had a delivery one day, and Pippin was eager to know what was coming:

What was coming was a new recliner!  Hooray!  Now the living room looks cozier, and if two people come to visit me, as they do from time to time, each will have their very own chair and won't be forced (shudder) to share the sofa with me:

Naturally, because this is my house, the chair could not remain unembellished.  Within minutes of its arrival, it somehow acquired a decorative throw, and Pippin approved:

That's all for now.  We have colder weather on the way, even a minor threat of snow, so there may not be much to report next time!

Have a great week out there, everyone!