Paper and Threads

My daughter brought me tulips on the 18th to celebrate Spring.  I tried to be really loose sketching and painting them.

Last Friday my daughter brought Callum to stay with us for 5 days - I love having my grandchildren here alone with us.  After he had his bath and went to bed, I sketched his really cute little shoes.  Without sketching and painting them, I'm not sure that I would have ever really noticed they are blue gray and lime green.  These 7wide little feet have certainly grown beautifully since he was born 6 weeks early in London one year ago.

When Callum's cousin Annabelle was born on Saturday, I decided to sketch and paint the bear that I made to celebrate her birth.  Tomorrow we will go to meet her and visit my son and daughter-in-law for the weekend and the bear will take her first train ride.  I love watching my children become parents - they are all so much in love with these little guys!

Posted by Shirley at 8:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (15)

Annabelle Miriam was born today at 3:54 PM to our son Jason and his wife Shannon.  Mommy and baby are wonderful and Dad - a Pediatrician - says she's just perfect.  I sketched and painted the waiting nursery when I visited several weeks ago - and took her the new babyquilt and matching musical pillow.  This week I made her a really soft pink bear and will take it for our visit next weekend.

                              There is a music box in this shadow applique pillow.

                                           This bear is so soft - I hope she loves it! 

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We don't play cards - and the only deck that I could find in the apartment came from a Benefit Dinner for a Health Care non-profit organization that we attended.  Loved the joker - so that was good for sketching.  The individual cards each had a single Medicare fact printed on the face side.  Wish I had something more exciting! 

Posted by Shirley at 8:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

I got behind last week when I was working on my blog entry re: recylcled books.  Here finally are the last two challenges:  Body lotions that smell good and my Breakfast.

Posted by Shirley at 5:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (10)

I still try to practice faces and figures as much as possible since this is one of my goals for 2008.  Here are a few that I haven't posted previously.

 This was a traditional photo that I tried to stylize in the sketch.

A watercolor sketch from another magazine advertisement.  I tried to minimize the amount of ink in the drawing and to work on mixing watercolor skin tones. 

When I was shopping for more watercolor pencils at Pearl Paint, I found the eye, nose, and mouth sketch on the left on the "test pad" hanging on the cabinet containing the pencils.  I had to rip it off to test my pencils and since there was no longer anyone around, I brought it home for my own practice.  I'm in awe of someone who could quickly dash these off - and tried to do the same.

This was a bad experiment!  I wanted to try the Mars Lumograph black pencil and my Cretacolor white pencil on a scrap of brown sketching paper.  The brown color is just too dark to really see the sketch, so I'll go back and buy a lighter tan for more experimentation.

Posted by Shirley at 4:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)