Week 1 in Drawing

I don't have anything crafty to share, but I have been logging a lot of time with my drawing class. Here are my sketches for the week - all studies in charcoal. I've never used it before and it's a bit messy as opposed to my fav, colored pencils. But I think I'm getting the hang of it. These 3 pages were done during class. The big challenges for me with these were getting used to the charcoal and also drawing from 3D objects, which I'm really not very good at, lol. These are all in my big drawing book, the pages are 18x24 inches.

Study #1 - Charcoal Stick - Wooden White Bird - August 24, 2011

Study #2 - Charcoal Stick - Ceramic Black Cat - August 24, 2011

Study #3 - Charcoal Stick - Faux Pear and Glossy Stone Apple - August 26, 2011

These other 4 are from my smaller sketch book which is 9x12. They are my at home studies so all of these goodies were actually found around our home ;)



Sketch #1 - Ceramic Bird - Charcoal Stick and Pencil - August 27, 2011

Sketch #2 - Charcoal Pencil and Vine - Turtle Sand Beanie - August 27, 2011

Sketch #3 - Charcoal Pencil and Vine - Littlest Pet Shop Fish - August 28, 2011

Sketch #4 - Charcoal Pencil and Vine - Silk Orchids Mini - August 28, 2011

The beanie turtle and orchids are my favorite of the bunch. I think I've finally come up with a method that works for me with the charcoal and that's to use the pencils and the vines. The stick is a little hard to control but it does give nice deep black lines and shades great for big surfaces. I forced myself out of my comfort zone and stuck with solely the stick on my big pad projects and then experimented with the others at home. Anyway, just thought I'd share. Hope you all had a wonderful week!





Altering My Sketchbook

My drawing class requires two drawing pads. The octopus is on an 18x24 inch drawing pad and this one is my sketch book, just 9x12. I didn't really come up with a plan for these books ahead of time, instead they both worked out with one thing leading to another. With the octopus, it started with the blue pencil that led to a blue varigated D that led to fishes in the rest of the letters which led to the octopus. This sketch pad went much quicker mostly because it's quite a bit smaller, but also because the inspiration for the peacock came immediately after I finished coloring in the sketch of the girl. The colors I picked ended up reminding me of a peacock so I went with it starting with the feather and then drawing the bird's profile in the left corner. The colors are much darker and saturated in real life, probably because I used a flash again since it's late and I know I won't get around to taking any photos in the morning. Anyway, even though I'm not doing anything crafty, I thought I'd share ;) Hope you enjoy and are having a great week! Thanks for visiting!

Uniquefying My Drawing Pad

All three of us girls have started back-to-school and it has been so hectic here for the past couple weeks! Apple and I started this week while Cherry began last week (kindergarteners in our district start a week later due to individual testing the first week). Unfortunately, because we're still getting used to the routine, our home has been in this perpetual state of looking like a tornado blew through. And of course instead of cleaning, I'm playing around with doodles on my drawing pad. After all, I don't want it looking like everyone else's pad, right? ;) So here's my fun huge doodle to uniquefy my drawing pad. The close up is to show you the fun little fish and bubbles I put in the letters. Just a quick post since I'm off to read for biology now. Thanks for stopping by and seeing what we're up to!

For the Hubs

Paul's birthday was on Monday and we surprised him with some fun homemade banners, lemon cream-cheese cake, and gifts. These were my crafty creations for his day. Of course I had to make him a card. And I couldn't help but use birthday Josh. The girls demanded daddy have a goatee on his card so I did my best to replicate his face fuzz. Paul loved it, lol! Apple also wanted daddy to have his blue eyes so I added a very slight blue line next to the pupil. There isn't much room there to do that, but I think it turned out quite well ;)



My dear hubby is an avid reader like myself and I had found a bunch of thrift books right up his alley. The classics 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and Treasure Island, both of which he hasn't read surprisingly, plus a bunch of 'literature' mini books on classic poetry and myths, just like some of his other lit books he kept from his classes in college. I know that sounds completely boring to most people, myself included ha! But he loves that stuff ;) So I made a new bookmark for him (he's great at losing those) for his new reads and a bookmark for his other project that I made...

... A book journal! He's been talking about keeping track of his reads better and so I took a composition notebook and covered it. I also covered the inside panels to have a little folder spot for him to slip stuff in. Then for the first half of the book I organized the pages, putting prompts for his book entries (Title, Author, Date, Rating, Plot, and Thoughts) along with list sections for what books he wants to read, favorites, etc. Because he loves writing as well I put in some fun poetry prompts for him and writing challenges. After seeing how cool his turned out, I'm itching to make one for myself! Especially since most of my summer has been spent reading rather than crafting, hehe. Anyway, thanks for stopping by and I hope y'all have a great weekend!

Crazy for Reptiles

Though Cherry is usually the reptile fan in our family, Apple also jumped the reptile bandwagon while we were at the zoo. She really got into all the lizards, snakes, and turtles. She calls the huge snake she got as a souvenir "daddy snake". Paul and I like to call him Jake the Snake like from Rango since his tail jingles, he's got the evil viper eyes, and well Jake the Snake is just plain fun. I truly expected Cherry to get a snake since snakes are her favorite but she was really intent on bringing home a dinosaur. She picked out this very bright blue T-Rex which reminds me of blue raspberry icees. The T-Rex has yet to gain a name that actually sticks other than T-Rex, but we're working on it ;) 

The zoo trip was just the girls and I. Paul had a few doctors appointments and some tests to do and it just turned out that they were on a day that I didn't have any classes. So we thought it would be fun to take the girls up north with us and I would spend the day at the zoo with them. They loved it so much that even after getting home late at night after a 5 hour drive home, Apple still asked the next morning if we could go back up to the zoo again, lol! They really loved seeing all those animals. We'll definitely be doing this again next year ;)

Elephants and Rhinos

The elephants were so cool that the girls wanted to visit their exhibit twice. And I'm glad we did. The first time was for the elephant show which was really just the zookeepers talking about how they care for the elephants and the elephant demonstrating a few things. Both the girls liked the elephant, but weren't overly amazed about this show like they were at the bird show earlier. However, the second time we came back, the baby elephant Zoey was out. The girls loved watching her and her momma ;)

This is the last week before school starts back up for us, so we're definitely trying to make the most of it! Plus we still have our back-to-school shopping to do, eek! Anyways, I hope you all enjoy the pages and have a great Monday!