A Walk on the Wild Side, and More Art Attempts

 I'm one of those annoying people who wants to not only know what everything is, but likes to inform everyone she meets after finding out what things are so they'll know, too.  

Sometimes this does not go over too well.  When I first started hiking around in the natural areas here, I noticed wildflowers, and naturally wanted to know their names.  So I've been studying up, and have managed to learn a few here and there.  For example, this is called Columbia Milkvetch:

I spotted it at the Columbia Point natural area while walking the Hounds.

The hounds were not impressed by the way I kept stopping to stare at tiny flowers -- all they wanted to know was if they were edible.

And this is a type of phlox:

Truman had zero interest in it.

Neither did Pippin.

Finally, I believe this is Fiddleneck Tarweed:

Notice the utter disdain with which Truman greets this knowledge, since the Tarweed is not edible.

Oddly enough, the many people I later showed my photos to failed to share my excitement at having identified these little plants.  Sure, they're not showy by any means -- most of the flowers are 1/4" or so around -- but should they be greeted with resounding indifference merely for lack of the wow factor?  I think not!

So I shall continue my endeavor to learn the local wildflowers as the Spring progresses, and I shall continue to annoy my friends and family with bits of useless knowledge.  It's what I'm good at.

Okay, on to the Art.  We did two Zoom sketch sessions but one produced a drawing that was not terribly exciting (it lacked the wow factor, and when it comes to Art, that's a reasonable excuse to avoid showing a piece, if you ask me).  The second was all right -- the photo we chose was of a fountain in the shape of a dragon -- the only issue was that the photographer cut it off in odd places so that you couldn't see the whole dragon.  Whatever.  I drew it anyway:

And then I went to work on my Aziraphale portrait in oils.  Which was frustrating indeed.  You may recall that I haven't done any oil painting for around ten years, and very little even then.  My newest effort quickly taught me that it is awfully darned tricky.  First, I did the classic grisaille technique of a gray value study:

The idea is to glaze layers of color over this underpainting, allowing the values to stay true.  I tried painting a lavender sort of background, his coat, and his hair...but got the paint too thick.  It looked quite odd before doing the face, as you can see here:

And because the paint was too thick, it was taking forever to dry, and I got terribly bored, and decided to relieve my boredom by painting an acrylic version of the same photo.  Sadly, it wound up not looking very much like Aziraphale:

Sigh.

By the time that was done, though, the oil paint had dried, so I returned to that version, and tried thinner layers on the face, but for some reason (possibly the fact that I don't really know what I'm doing?), it failed to wind up looking anything like the grisaille.  And while it did look a little bit more like Aziraphale, it still wasn't quite right:

Dang.  So that was not an unqualified success.  I did learn things, though!  Next time I probably won't bother with an underpainting, for one thing.  

Before I tackle a portrait of Crowley in oils (he clearly deserves equal time), I returned to that other idea that vexed me last week -- the picture of Aziraphale rescuing Crowley from prison.  If you were paying attention, that idea was based off this fresco by Raphael (aim high!) which depicts an angel rescuing St. Peter:

If you look at last week's post, you'll see that I reversed this image, photoshopped Aziraphale and Crowley heads in, got rid of most of the bars and the guards, and then drew it on a canvas, where the painting attempt utterly failed.  The heads were too small for good details.  Next I tried it enlarged a bit as a colored pencil drawing, which I'm not showing as it started looking awful fairly early on.

Finally, I opted to pop the original fresco pic into, appropriately enough, Adobe Fresco, and just redraw and repaint it all digitally.  This took a while, but was much more satisfying as to results:

So no, I can't hang it on my wall unless I print out a nice copy which I can't do because the color printer isn't that good and it's out of ink anyway.  But it makes me happy.  

Tune in next week to see if I make any progress on a Crowley portrait in oil.  Such larks!

Have a great week in the meantime!