Water Gourd

Happy Saturday, I worked on this after running errands today.  The Native Americans used gourds for Water and seed storage containers.  This makes for a good drawing practice and good shadow studies.  This one was made by the Cahuilla Indians of California.

Thunderbirds - Design

Design is an important consideration which in the visual arts sometimes takes a back seat to the discussion of composition.  Design gets talked about for furniture, architecture, and models of cities, but not everyone thinks about it in art.  Too often the starting artist tries to copy things exactly as nature presents it, but the secret in drawings and paintings is they need to be designed and simplified.  The Native Americans intuitively knew this and I am always amazed and awed by the great design and simplified representations used to convey ideas.  I have copies some of these designs as in the Thunderbirds above because these simple sketches easily and superbly represent their ideas about the mythical birds which carried the Thunder through the heavens.

Anvil

Another quick sketch from tonight.  This is a practice work and how I relax and de-stress from the day's work.  So enjoy and I will continue to post these for you.

Water Pump

A pencil sketch of a water pump is today's posting.  I have done this over the past two nights as part of the nightly recovery from the work day.  This is part of the 10,00 hours of practice necessary to reach mastery of a skill.  Much work is still needed but it is definitely on the way.

American Dipper

This is a colored pencil sketch of an American Dipper.  They are probably one of the weirdest birds in the United States.  They dive into streams and walk on the bottom of the stream and eat insects off the rocks.  I had heard of them long ago, I finally saw them on the Arkansas River in the Royal Gorge area of Colorado.  We probably saw ten or twelve of them resting on the shoreline and the ice.  They are little and immune to the water and the cold.  They have strong claws to grasp the rocks under the water as it rushes by.

Fishing boat sketch

I painted some today with oil and I finished up the evening relaxing with this practice sketch with pencil of a fishing boat.  I added the name of my daughter Tiffany D. to the boat for fun.  I am not sure what she would think of that, but I am sure I will know soon enough.

Sketching during the short waits

I greatly admire the artist James Gurney, his blog site is Gurney's Journey which has been going since 2007.  One of the things he does is carry a sketchbook with him and he is constantly sketching.  I try to do something similar.  Above are two examples, one is the condiments from Famous Dave's restaurant and the bottom is a water cooler in a Doctor's office.  Both are pretty small but were enjoyable and a good way to spend the waiting time for food and the Doc.