Boathouse Friday

The boathouse is a good place to hang out on Fridays.

It was kind of a girls' night, then Ed showed up which is fine because Ed is great.

There were cherries in the fridge.

Daya and I both have a bad cherry addiction.  She didn't like them until.... last week or so when I got some at Costco. She has always turned them down, but I guess she tried them, and then apologized for eating the rest.

Of course I didn't mind one bit.

Daya has been at work the last three days at 6am on the Upper West Side and we haven't seen much of each other.  Last night I came home to a cute note about shopping she did with the receipts, and a note to please help her stop eating cherries.  I wrote her back that I cannot in good conscience do that because cherries are awesome and we'll add it to the list of food I like that she now likes but didn't a short time ago.  And also I said told you so.

I did a VERY respectable job going through those cherries, but I also saved a good amount for Daya and took them home for her.

Bitz brought her dog and we tried to fit Reign with a life jacket.  She hated it!

I did another kayak painting. I need to practice a bit for the coordination.

The water was wonderful.

I like this sign in the boathouse, it is good advice:

Because 9.5 Hours Yesterday Wasn't Enough.......

I was planning on going out painting today.

No boathouse.

But when I woke up.... I just wasn't feeling it.

I woke up angsty from my obnoxious sunburn, and I didn't sleep well.

Plus, since today is a federal holiday I knew EVERYONE would be out and about.

So I was floating around my apartment feeling angsty and having absolutely no clue what to do with myself.... and I suddenly decided to go down to the boathouse.

10 minutes later I was out the door.

Everyone wanted to tell me about my sunburn, despite wearing long leggings.

DUH I KNOW.  Kedrin says it's because they care and I know she's right but I am very well ware of it and there's nothing to do but let time do its thing.

After the public program I went out on the water with a tow rope, tied myself to a buoy, and finished that painting I stared on my ill-fated drifting excursion.

The current kept spinning me around opposite to where my view was it mostly it really worked out very well. Although I did want white gouache....

A New Way to Screw Up Plein Air

I FINALLY got back to the boathouse!

It was so, SO good to be back.

The day was insanely busy.

But only one person fell in, and only one person lost their wallet in the river.

(They should not have had it with them, we do provide free lockers. And we warn people.)

After the public program ended, I was desperate to get on the wter.

Not only because I miss kayaking, but also because i needed to test out my ew kayak plein air setup.

Wierdly, no one else went out.  That's really unusual.

It did not go well.

The setup is fine and will work great, but I really screwed up.

I don't like being in the embayment alone and I was so conscious of it.

And also.............

Basically, there was a current that was pulling people out all day.  

It wasn't hard to paddle, but the drift was FAST.

I drifted out WAY past the boundaries and didn't even realize it... it really happened so fast.

I had a massive OH SHIT moment and i have never paddled so fast in my life.

It was bad.

I was genuinely scared because I was absolutely definitely not supposed to be in the middle of large boat traffic. Not like that. 

But I got back ok.

Everything got wet and I was shaken so I went back in.

I wasn't even out for a half hour.

Next time I'm going to take a tow rope and tie myself to a buoy... this was a brilliant suggestion given by another volunteer. 

My boathouse keyholder  people were very nice about it but I did apologize profusely.

This is officially my scariest plein air experience and I have nothing to show for it but I sure will next time!

This is happening.

Dry bag, watercolors, clip, prep cutting board, museum putty, brushes, command hanging strips, pencil, kneaded eraser.

It's all secured, you can flip the whole thing upside-down and nothing will move.

I am so excited for kayak season!!

I have decided……

…. That I am going to figure out how to paint from a kayak this season.

it is going to happen.

I cannot use oils, I don;’t think the setup would work at all, and pastels should not go anywhere near water.

But watercolor could work!

I got a small Winsor Newton set…. And I’m going to figure out a kayak setup.

Unruly Chives

I have been feeling weird lately, I don't know why.  Can't figure it out. I don't know if it's me or just the energy of the world in general but I feel strange, fatigued, and uninspired. There's nothing wrong or anything concerning going on, I just feel really weird and blah. And I don't feel like painting.

I'm sure this funky haze will pass eventually.  I decided to just let it be and be where I am and not worry about it, even though it has been going on for several weeks now. 

But in the absence of painting- both plein air and studio work, I decided to just do some sketchbook work instead.  Small pages that don't require a lot of time, thinking, or commitment but still keep me doing something.  Normally I don't show sketchbook work, but today, wow I messed up and I should have known better and I'm very annoyed with myself.

I started a new book and all I'm doing in it are little plant paintings in watercolor and colored pencil.  Just something small and nice to do. And a couple of days ago I did a little drawing of my crazy chive plant.  I called it Unruly Chives.

Today I felt like taking out my oil pastels and I did a page facing my Unruly Chives, which was a huge mistake.  How could I forget that oil pastels- if you go all the way to the edges of the page- mess everything else up on other pages?

It messed up my (very nice) page of Eastshade Bloomsac, and I was Not Happy abut that.  I salvaged it as best as I could.  I'll probably end up re-doing it on another page. 

I will have to re-do this page. :(

The new unruly chives also messed up the other unruly chives so I just have to leave it and say that's what happens when something is unruly. I want this book to be nice and neat so it bugs me.

Seriously though, how could I forget that about oil pastel?

It's ok as long as it is taped off... as it, like chives, is definitely unruly.

30 Faces in 30 Days- Half Point

I mentioned once buried in a post somewhere that I'm doing 30 Faces in 30 days thru Sktchy Art School this month which is an online thing.
I found it on Instagram.

The Sktchy app has been around for several years now, it's where people upload their selfies which can be used as art reference.

I don't really use it but I saw this challenge on Instagram and felt very pulled to do it.
There are (I think) 5 teachers who share a video with a portrait tip every day along with a reference photo.

For the most part this has been worthwhile.
I'm finding it very difficult to do time-wise, as the time I can usually do it is at night at the end of the day and I'm pretty tired.  This in addition to all the other art stuff I have been doing.

But I am keeping up with it.

Some of the lessons are good reminders, good review, or just taking a different approach and trying something new, no risk.
Some days are just stuff I already know.
Only 2 of them I have found to be essentially worthless and not well-taught.
(I outright disagree with one of them.)
Mostly they are pretty good. Nothing new, just different perspectives and working in ways I normally don't.

Everything is done in one small watercolor sketchbook, it's a 5x7 or thereabouts.
It is getting me to do stuff I wouldn't mess with otherwise.
None of them are long, time spent ranges from 5 minutes to about an hour.
None of this is meant to be "finished" work.

I like a couple of them, most are ok enough, and a few I really don't like and that's ok.
There is value in all of it.

Day 1: Blind Contour Drawing- I haven't done this since college? high school even? And it really is super-valuable.

Day 2: Proportions I like this lesson too, but it only works for a straight-on view.

Day 3: Mapping Light and Shadow

Day 4: Shading in One Direction

Day 5 Vanishing Point (this is the one I disagree with)

Day 6: Finding Motivation in a Word

Day 7: Set a Time Limit

Day 8: Creating a Natural Black

Day 9: Leaving your Drawing Unfinished

Day 10: Negative Space

Day 11: Sculpting with White Space

Day 12: Drawing Teeth (and Loving it)

Day 13: Marking off Proportions

Day 14: Crosshatching with a Limited Palette

Day 15: Creating Contrast with Warm and Cool Colors

Most of the photo references are ones I would never choose.
So actually it's good that I'm working with them.

Almost none of them would be good for painting.

But they are ok enough for drawing.

Jerry's Focus Group

Tonight I went to a focus group for Jerry's which was run by Drawing New York.

We got to play around with and give feedback on some materials. Sketches not much, about 15 minutes total.

I was going for a subtractive drawing technique but that charcoal was not great to be honest.

This was 2 minutes of testing the graphite which was better than the charcoal.

The second is a very quick watercolor, under 10 minutes. We were supposed to do a small still life but our host Heather (Who is Jerry's granddaughter!) was more interesting so I painted her instead. I gave her the painting, it's not very good and wasn't intended to be anything serious but it was still fun. We got to keep the supplies which are ok, the sketchbook is quite nice.

Gouache & Puffers & T-Rex

My amazing friend Drusilla invented the BEST WORD EVER today: 

Pufferfishish.

So instead of painting the dance studio at dance, I painted puffers in my sketchbook.

I did a little experimenting with materials combinations.

Near the end of class, one of the other moms came over to chat. She works at the Museum of Natural History, and today her new exhibit opened.  So for the party, she wore a T-Rex inner ear.  It is larger than life, and she thinks it is too big but I think it is the coolest thing ever.

She was so nice to let me try it on!

So then I was explaining how pufferfishish came about, and how Dru and I like weird animals and we call them our pets, she pulled up a video of peacock spiders doing the most ridiculous mating dance.

I love these wonderfully weird encounters. 

Ten Years.

I have had this travel watercolor set for 10 YEARS.

Only today did I discover that bottom tray slides out.

Gouache and Moleskine

I got a new Moleskine sketchbook, the watercolor one. 
James Gurney uses these.
It's different from my gray drawing paper, and I like it.

I would like to fill or mostly-fill the book this month.

Friday Night

Saturday