The Usual Miscellany

 This past week I liked both of the pieces I did during our two Zoom art practice meetings -- that hasn't happened in a while.  But as I mentioned last week, there were watercolor books checked out from the library to work through, and YouTube tutorials to watch, and I DID that, and possibly learned a thing or two.  

And then I applied that knowledge to the practice pieces, and voila, things seemed to work better.  Mostly.  On the whole. Whatever.  Here's the first one, part of a door at Edinburgh Castle:

The technique I tried for it was using salt on wet watercolor washes for a more textured look to the stones.  

Both drawings were rendered in ink and watercolor.  The second one is of a pier in Tacoma, for which I tried a wet-in-wet sky technique that made use of a bristle fan brush that produced a lot of cool movement to the clouds:

So it was a productive week artistically (and there's a little more to come yet).  And it was a productive week for dog walks -- Pippin can go farther now, up to half a mile at a stretch.  We've been making regular visits to the dock to check for riverboats, and were rewarded one day by one of the paddle wheelers:

My other artistic endeavor last week involved painting a wall -- or rather, a small portion of a wall in the dining room.  It's a long (31 inches) but quite short (6 inches at the highest point) series of images from Good Omens rendered in silhouette down at the baseboard:

It was just a little painful at times, getting down that low (I did have a pillow to kneel on) and craning my neck and arm round while drawing and painting it on there.  For some of the really small areas I used a pen.  I might continue it once my knees recover...

My other idea is to draw the music from the opening theme above the images -- I recently tracked down the piano sheet music for it.  (After playing it a few times, I got it stuck in my head for days.  Yay.)

In other home decorating news, at a yard sale this past week I found a queen comforter and five decorative pillows in a style that spoke to me, all for $20.  I decided they would make the boring sofa less boring:

The Hounds seem to like it.

Well, that's about as exciting as it gets here in the Channeled Scablands of southeastern Washington.

May you all have a lovely week wherever you are!