It has been a while since I took pictures during one of my jaunts with Asha, so last Sunday morning I grabbed my camera when Asha and I headed out. We went to roam the paths next to the governor’s mansion, which is a short drive from our house. At 6:30 in the morning, there was no one else around, so I didn’t worry about letting Asha off leash.  It really is a lovely area, with paths, ponds, open fields, rolling hills and trees. When we arrived, there was a lot of mist coming off of the ponds, but it doesn’t show up well in the photos. Asha does not like having her picture taken, so she is pretty serious looking in all of the photos, but I think she had a good time even though I was being very annoying. If you want to see some of the photos I took, click here.

I grabbed an ATC background card which I had stamped with a weave stamp long ago and I drew with gel pens this woman, based on some reference photo I downloaded from some long forgotten site. She had a look that said to me “the party is over” and so I have entitled it “Night Life.”  I never was much of a party girl myself. I was always ready to go to bed when everyone else was just getting started.

For the past week I’ve been ill and haven’t gotten any artwork done, but yesterday before work I finally spent a half hour in the studio and did this clayboard ATC. It is based on a portrait of a goth looking girl taken by the Rhino Studio. My rendition is not very faithful to the photo but I console myself with the thought that I was only doing it as an exercise. I have a lot of difficulty in controlling my marks and so compensate by making everything sort of loosely scratched. The more I work with clayboard the more I admire those artists who have really mastered this medium and do such incredible work. This sort of work really feeds into my love of working with light and dark.

I had used an image of a roman statue for a mixed media piece and so I had a few copies of it sitting on my work table. I also had an old book sitting there that I had torn apart for another project. My ink pens were also strewn around the table. The result of these random elements being there was that I sat down and very roughly sketched the statue on a page of text from the disassembled book. Then I cut it down to ATC size.  Sometimes, that is the way it happens. I feel in the mood to do something creative, but I don’t want to wait to clean up from my last project. So, I just look around at what is already there and find some way to use it.  Nothing special, but it is good to loosen up my hand and use it every day.

It is too bad there aren’t any life drawing classes around where I live that are open to artists in general. It would really be nice to be able to draw the human form from life again like I did in my college days. 

I liked the photo of my grandmother lounging in the sun with my grandfather’s hat perched on her head so I decided to sketch it this morning using some of my ink pens. I regret my initial use of an orange pen to lay in my overall shapes. The scan is less than optimal, but I find that is often the case when I try to scan work that has a lot of line work in it.  I am not too keen on the results here, but I do like getting in a little drawing before having to get ready and head off to my totally non-creative job. Asha’s been at daycare for a few days to enjoy the burgeoning spring weather with her canine friends while I toil away filing reports with the Securities and Exchange Commission. I miss her, so I think I will go and get her after work tonight. I am really ready for some time off and days of early morning dog romps, but I don’t know how soon I will be able to work out some time off. Too many things going on. I just might be able to finagle next week off, but the dilmemma is whether I should take a week off now when the forecast is for a week of rain, or wait until the end of May and take two weeks off. Decisions, decisions.

Here is another clayboard/scratchboard study. The scan on this one is not so hot. This one is 5 x 7 inches in size. I am still just trying to figure out how to work with this medium. The source photo is a photo of my grandparents sitting in their back garden enjoying the sun.

Now that I have fulfilled most of my swap commitments and finished my taxes (yay!), I finally feel like I can start working on some of the art projects that have been rattling around in my brain. I’ve been wanting to explore working on clayboard more and so I grabbed an ATC sized piece of clayboard and looked around for something to use as a reference source. Sitting on my desk was a Polish postage stamp of Stanislaw Szober someone had sent me. It had good areas of light and dark so off I went. Mostly, this piece was just about exploring how different utensils cut into the clayboard and how much control I have (or in this case, don’t have). I used a metal piercing tool and an exacto knife to cut into the clayboard to expose the white clay. These two tools were surprisingly different in how they felt to hold and use and also in the sorts of results they produced. My lines are not controlled, not like I see in some of the marvelous clayboard work around. I am simply amazed with what some artists can do with this medium. It has so much potential, but I will need to work hard to ever reach that potential. But, since I stocked up on clayboard supplies over the course of the last year or two, I should be able to work on my clayboard technqiue for some time to come.