More "art"

Sorry. Just can't seem to bring myself to leave off the quotation marks.

I'm not sure if I'll get around to Illustration Friday this week, so here's another page from the Book of Random Art Supplies. It's colourful, at least, even if it really makes no sense.

Still having trouble with the fact that it's ok to make no sense with this kind of thing...

Tie job in graphite

This week's Illustration Friday prompt is paisley. And I... dislike paisley. Rather a lot, really. Not in its original Indian form -- some of that paisley work can be amazing -- but in the horribly gaudy way that it's often used in Western cultures. It's almost a gut reaction with me. Too many flashbacks to bad polyester 70s caftans or things like that, maybe.

Anyway, I decided that the best way for someone like me to do paisley would be to ransack a closet, grab a tie, and in tribute to my father (who dislikes ties almost as much as I dislike paisley), heap it in a fairly unceremonious pile. And there you have it.

Happy Father's Day, Dad.

More pointess "art"

I know pointlessness usually belongs to the other blog, but it's over here today because for various reasons I won't be doing anything for this week's Illustration Friday prompt.

And this?

Is a pizza.

Well, it's tempera over words torn from pizza delivery ads, anyway.

I guess my inner five-year-old was hungry that day.

The struggling artist?

The little modelling clay men were upset that they weren't given the chance to participate in Drawing Day.

I suppose I really should let them out more often...

Vole track in watercolour pencil

Quick watercolour sketch for Illustration Friday's prompt of trail.  This was based on a photo I took in the sanctuary where I work (ok, strictly speaking I work at the nature centre at the entrance to the sanctuary.  A lot of the actual work takes place in the sanctuary, though).  It was winter, and just the time of day when the low sun is turning the snow a weird combination of yellow highlights and blue shadows.

The vole had crossed the walking path and was headed towards its tunnel in a snow drift.  There was a bit of open space before it could get there, though, and although it did its best to hide under some of the dead grass stems along the way it was pretty lucky that there weren't any predators about at the time.  I'm assuming, anyway.  No signs of a struggle, as they say.

Not sure why I chose a winter theme when I'm sooo not a fan of winter, but there you go.

Oh, and if any of you haven't posted for Drawing Day yet, there's still time.  Assuming that you're reading this today, of course...

Drawing Day 2010

Yep, here's my Drawing Day daylily, fresh from the sketchbook.  And for a change I'm not going to say that it's a rush-job before work, or sorry I'm posting a day late, or whatever other excuse you usually hear.  I remembered it was Drawing Day, I had the time (um, in between laundry loads), and here you have the result.  The original was a photo I took a few years ago, since the daylilies aren't blooming yet and I felt like drawing a daylily.

For the media geeks out there, this was done in Pigma sepia Microns (05 and 01.  And yes, I know that my camera's not really registering it as sepia.  It is, though) in a Moleskine sketchbook.

Happy Drawing Day, all.

Are you art?

Insofar as the... thing you see to the left has a title, Are You Art would be that title.  If you click on the photo to enlarge it, you might even be able to see those exact words in there somewhere.  I promise that they're there.

Yes, folks, this is how I've been spending a bit of my time lately.  Doing my best to destroy a perfectly innocent sketchbook.  It's just an ordinary recycled paper sketchbook, but for some reason I've decided to punish it via mixed media.  The pages are wavy, the cover is already warped... and why?

To be honest, I don't know.  I guess maybe I wanted to shake things up a bit.  Try some different techniques without the outcome having to matter.  Ok -- make a mess, no strings attached.

And am I getting anything out of it?

Oh, I don't know.  I'll admit that it's kind of relaxing to come home and gesso the hell out of a page after a busy day's work.  And I'm probably learning things about the various media that I might not have otherwise.

But...

I can't help feeling like a five-year-old wrecking a book for no apparent reason.

Hey, wait.  Is that really such a bad thing?  Maybe we all need to feel like five-year-olds every once in a while...

Anyway, I took a few scans of the thing this morning, so maybe I'll post one now and then if I haven't been doing any doodling (and so far as the doodling goes, I've just been a little busy lately.  That's all).  After all, I hesitated to post this one, but now that I've done it you may as well see just how big a mess I can actually make.

Oh, and don't forget tomorrow: