While working on my sketching and watercolor class last fall, the L.L. Bean Hunting catalog arrived.  I was instantly taken with the stag on the cover, and wanted to try to sketch him…to my utter delight, it worked!

The Stag Christmas card....made just a dozen....

Here is a snapshot of the catalog cover and my sketch:

The initial sketch, before doing the water-wash to get the shading

Fortunately, when I shared that I had used their photo with LL Bean, they didn’t mind!  I used a Tombow water-soluble ink pen on this as well as a permanent India-Ink (Pitt by Faber-Castell) pen for the outlines.  The permanent pen doesn’t bleed or leak, which preserves the crisp outlines.  Then I shaded with the Tombow (a medium-dark gray) and used a Niji Waterbrush to spread the ink.  A tiny bit of the Tombow bled outside the inked lines in the antler, but so it goes.  Finally, I used an extra-fine tipped Pitt pen to write “Forever Wild” as a “frame” for the  sketch.  Back in the old days, Maine’s Governor Percival Baxter bequeathed a huge tract of land to the state which is now Baxter State Park.  His only requirement was that the land remain “forever wild.”

The photo or scan didn’t transfer all the shading to the cream card stock, but it looks good anyway!  PHEW!  Here’s a photo of the cards and the back of a gift ornament (post coming in a couple days) :

Card, ornament and 4-pen set of Pitt pens

I was interviewed and videographed (filmed?) by a student at nearby Maine Media Workshops (used to be Maine Photographic Workshops) in Rockport, Maine–also found on Facebook here.  This came up almost at the last moment back in October, and I am finally (hanging my head in shame) getting to sharing it with all of you! I quickly tidied the few messes in  my studio—I guess having been too busy to work there paid off!  I took out a bunch of my quilts to put on the design wall, and learned a lot from the filming process.  Thank you so much for picking me!  How lucky I am to live near the workshop, eh?

Anyway…here I am….  Hope you enjoy seeing the clip and learning a bit about my “life before quilting” and my journey in quilting. And special thanks to our son Joshua, whose quilt is featured at the end of the video along with his music (you can here more on YouTube here and here and here) and to the videographer who wanted to use his music to accompany his quilt!  WOOT!

First, I WANT her photo-flood lights, the kind with the silver rectangular umbrella and a white cover that diffuses the light so well.  Then, in filming, there is an “A Roll” and a “B Roll.”  The A roll is the main interview (took about 10-14 minutes), which you will hear in the soundtrack, and see parts of the interview (Gosh… I hate the way my mouth moves when I talk!  Usually I hate the sound of my own voice, but that was OK this time… but … erk!  Anyway, that is totally to do with me and nothing to do with student or how cool this experience was!).  The B Roll is the next 5 hours of filming, edited into a coherent 3-minute video.

PS:  The student (a woman about my age or a bit younger) is employed by a major US Corporation and is in charge of the film/photography.  Since they subsidized her attendance at the workshop, she asked that I not name her or the  company so there would be no appearance that this clip was related to the company.  So that’s why the anonymity–but THANK YOU sometime-quilter and awesome photographer and videographer for picking me!

To see this larger, visit the link you YouTube, here.  And one last PS…the clip of the ambulance is stock footage…nothing like that big city anywhere near where I live!

OK…so I was actually (who me?) spontaneous this summer and signed up for a www.Joggles.com class with Jane LaFazio, Sketchbooks and Watercolor on Location.  The idea is/was that you go OUT to sketch and sketch from the real thing, not a photo.  I am SO GLAD I did…I’m having a ball, so much so that (as I’ve mentioned before) I signed up for a second class.  This post is about the first class, and one of the early lessons.

So I dropped the son off to run at the high school (this was late summer), and treated myself to tea and sweet at a nearby spot.

Told the child I wanted /needed about an hour.  After dithering about what treat to get, I finally sat down at this table with LUSCIOUS basil.

I briefly considered including the basil in the sketch. I then realized I'd be there 'til midnight if I tried, and decided (who me?) to go simple. OK, to go not as complicated.

Then I finally began to sketch.

A close-up of the cup and tea bag. Don't you just LOVE the cup sleeve, from the Carrabassett Coffee company?

Here is the sketch, done first in pencil, then inked in with a Pitt pen.  Of course, 20 minutes after I arrived I get a call:  “Mom, it’s too hot to run!”  Me:  “remember I said I needed about an hour?”  Then, “you’ll have to wait for me for another half hour…find a shady spot to sit.”  Sigh.

Inked in....cup is too short and not tapered enough, but still OK.

SO…. I packed up my cup and supplies and the rest of the chocolate cake (slurp), and retrieved the child and headed home.  It actually was pretty warm.  Then I set things up at home.  The shadows/light were different, but close enough….

Adding color at home, on the dining table, lacking the usual clutter around my spot.

And the final sketch:

Not too bad for a beginner....the curve of the cup isn't quite off, and the tea bag looks like it is levitating a bit, but not too bad....

Considering I’m just starting with watercolor, I’m pretty happy.  I have discovered that having REAL watercolor paper makes a world of difference, and having little water in the brush makes it much easier to stay within the shapes and not bleed and make yucky stuff! FUN!

As you might gather by the gap in my postings, it has been another busy week with both art and soccer (keep reading for the art part)!  Eli is in the final week or two of both league soccer and school cross country, with the championships for the latter last week, and….DRUM ROLL and MAJOR HOLLERING please…. ELI WON!   Yes, Eli won the Busline Cross Country Championship (Class B) on Tuesday!  Close on his heels (literally) was his best friend Ben, who came in second.  Both Boys and Girls teams won with undefeated season for the second year in a row (ya think Coach Morse is doing a fantastic job or what?!!!).    That was followed on Friday by Eli winning the Winthrop Invitational Cross Country meet, a course with lots of hills–best of all, they were competing against seven or more teams they had never raced, including the Class A Champion Cony Middle School Team AND he did it setting a new course record!  And to everyone (at least from our area) utter delight, both boys and girls won the team championships too!

And they're off! Eli is the arrow on the right, his best friend Ben W. on the left, and a passle of other middle school boys. This photo shows maybe one-third of the runners!

Eli crests the last small hill before heading into the chute and the finish line at the midcoast Maine Busline League Cross Country Championships

Eli WINS, with Ben close behind.... wow!

In August, I came across a bit Jane LaFazio posted on FaceBook about a sketchbook “On Location” class she is teaching online via Joggles.  Very uncharacteristically for me, I signed up on the spur of the moment, and I promise I’ll get caught up on blogposts and share with you the great stuff I did.  THEN she had a new class on Mixed Media Journals starting in October.  I really want to get in to the habit of using journals for my art, so I signed up right away.  Here is part of the first lesson:

The lesson was using water-soluble pen; first you sketch (well, I sure do!) in pencil, then ink, allow the ink to dry, erase the pencil and then "wash" the ink to shade. Here's the outlining.

The pitcher with *complicated* kitchen utensils (that spaghetti scoop was hard!) and my sketchbook. A while back I'd heard that drawing eggs is good practice in seeing shadows, so what is why the eggs on the spoon rest.

The two sketches. I've finished the page but haven't taken a picture (get with it Sarah!), so will do that later. Anyway, I'm reasonably pleased.

Now we’re off to the soccer league playoffs for all of Sunday, then more cross country and soccer next weekend and the following one….

After a week with quite nippy temperatures and the first frost, we’ve been given the gift of a glorious Indian summer weekend here in Maine.  Highs in the upper 70s (and even above inland I expect), lows in perfect sleeping weather.

The view from our porch late this afternoon. Some trees are losing leaves, but we still look mostly green... trees are turning, but nowhere near peak yet

Today was a grand day with a Coastal Quilters meeting after dropping our younger son off for his first 5K run.  The run is a fundraiser for the High School (graduating class maybe?), and coincides with Homecoming, and is open to adults, teens and middle school kids.  Eli’s Cross County coach, Jim Morse and one of the coolest teachers EVER on the planet let alone here in Camden, ran, as did Eli, his best friend since first grade B. W., and the top girl on their team J.R., also in 8th grade.  Well… just before the meeting began I got a call from the hubster with the results:  Mr. Morse won by a goodly margin.  Two college kids came in 2nd and 3rd.  Eli and B.W. came in 4th and 5th, respectively, and J.R. was the fastest female and in the top 10!  WOW!

Since Paul and Eli were at the high school watching games, etc., I decided to putter in town and have lunch (a rare treat!) at my favorite eatery, Marriner’s Grill.  I got a small table on the deck overlooking the harbor:

Camden Harbor from my seat on the deck at Marriner's Grill, my favorite diner

While waiting, I continued this wonderful book I’m reading called True to Life:  Twenty five eyars of conversations with David Hockney, by art critic (and really insightful writer) Lawrence Weschler.

A fascinating read, besides which Hockney is pretty cool and interesting

Given that I’ve put on a few pounds this past summer, the choice of BLT (Bacon Lettuce and Tomato for those not in the U.S.) and fries with diet cola was not exactly smart, but it sure tasted good!  Deborah…lookit!  I actually took a picture of my food before I snarfed it down!

A good meal: diet drink, fattening and tasty food, and a good book!

After that I went home, walked the doggie for 2 miles, then sat to start this week’s lesson.  An online class at Joggles.com, Sketching and Watercolors in a Mixed Media Journal with Jane LaFazio   began this week.  I know I’ve been promising what I did in the last class with her, and I will post, but decided I’d actually try posting what I’m doing NOW (and not months ago) when I can.  The hope is that I will make this journaling thing a habit AND improve my drawing skills.  The first lesson was to sketch an everyday object,  using a Tombow pen (a water-soluble ink… draw in pen, then use a wet brush to spread the ink to create light and shadow).  I decided that my laptop is definitely an everyday object, and since it is a Mac and Steve Jobs died this week and I love the quote I used, I’d sketch that:

R.I.P. Mr. Jobs. Thank you for changing our world.

Well…. I discovered that it is challenging to deal with a LOT of flat surfaces, omitting excess detail, and still find some shading.  Especially when the laptop and screen are mostly shades of gray, making the diffused shadows even more difficult.  I’ll try another, more textured something later, but for now…first the outlined-in-permanent pen version:

Used pencil to get the proportions and lines mostly right, then inked with a Pitt permanent pen, then erased the pencil

Next I added the gray (dark) Tombow and washed with water ….   I am not certain that we were supposed to use the permanent pen for this lesson, but I wanted to include some text and for the outlines to not blur, so I decided I would anyway.

The page with a quote from Steve Jobs, showing the Apple home page

And the sketch and laptop:

I simplified some, omitting some desktop icons and extra open windows.

All in all a wonderful day.  And since it is almost suppertime, I guess I’d better get off the computer (thank you Apple for making a great system!) and go think about dinner.  Maybe.  Pass me a white zin, first, please!