Welcome to 2021

Hoorah for getting through 2020!  Let us all hope that 2021 is a huge improvement, though I think we all know it will take a long time yet to get to a happier place all round.  So let's all keep those fingers crossed, please.

I started 2021 off by putting together a small bookcase in order to solve a decor issue in the living room.

Pippin tried to help....

The decor issue is that door you can see behind the finished bookcase here--it's a utility closet, and it's what I see when I sit on my sofa..

I found the view unappealing.  So I did my best to hide it with the bookcase and some plants (two are real, and two are fake):

Here is the new, improved view from the sofa.  Still some door showing, but nowhere near as displeasing:

Of course, I also spent time in the first few days of the new year drawing.  I thought I'd drawn all the Good Omens pictures I wanted to, until I found a photo of Aziraphale and Crowley from one of the historical scenes, and decided it would be fun to try making it look like an old-fashioned sepia drawing.  

I used only one colored pencil, a dark brown, using varying pressure, to render this piece.  I think it turned out quite nicely, if I do say so myself:

The Zoom sketch group met several times last week, and I did a couple of the drawings using the iPad with the Adobe Fresco program.  This octopus was one of those:

I don't think I could have drawn the lovely sand texture the old-fashioned way:

For the drawing below, I went back to non-digital means, using some water-soluble ink pens with a little colored pencil:

I returned to the iPad for a digital painting of these lovely flowers.  I doubt that I could have gotten that translucent look otherwise.

Finally, there should always be adorable dachshund pics on this blog, so here is a series that I call the Belly Rub Pleas:

Pippin is the absolute master of the belly rub pose:

Look at the cuteness!  It is too much to stand -- that belly WILL get rubbed!

Truman, on the other hand, has much to learn from Pip.  While he understands the basic Belly Rub Plea theory, he had yet to master its practical application, with this sort of half-hearted effort:

Though oddly enough, he somehow manages to get a belly rub anyway--so maybe he does know what he's doing....

That's it for now -- hope you all have a great start to 2021!