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!