Stuffed Animals Out of Control!

Last week I was working on a new portfolio sample and ended up using some of my own old stuffed animals as models. I should do some sketches of them for posterity, just as one of my PBAA friends, Paula Pertile, has drawn some from her collection. She has a fantastic blog at drawingafineline.blogspot.com. I'll put that on my Stuff To Do List...

The Last Dance II

I wrote all about my daughter's last dance recital and never included a photo of the dnacing star herself - so here she is!

The Last Dance Show

My daughter Laura's dance recital was last week and I had a lot of time for some field sketching during the seemingly endless dress rehersal. All those little girls were so cute in their costumes and makeup and hair all done up... I wish I could have captured them better. It was Laura's last dance show after years and years of dance classes. (She's off to college in the fall!) She did so well - a lyrical solo and a tap number set to "America" from West Side Story - I was really proud of her.

Halloween in June

I've been trying out some online selling sites for my art. Just trying to figure out how these sights work and how to post products for sale is a major undertaking for me, since I'm not real computer proficient! I've been working at it, though, and have a few Halloween things up at Zazzle and CafePress. It's never too early to get ready for Halloween! So that's what that last post was all about - kind of an experiment. I'll be writing about more stuff I have up for sale as I get through it, and I'll be posting some direct links to the shops. Meanwhile, I'll be thinking of costume ideasfor this year... Halloween is still my favorite holiday!

Halloween Spider ButtonbyMarileeHarraldPilz
Get this custom button at Zazzle

Hidden Pictures

I've been working on some new Hidden Pictures for Highlights Magazine. This is one that was published a while ago. See if you can find a hat, mitten, fried egg, watermelon slice, banana, muffin...and some other things in there! How do I come up with these puzzles? Well, it isn't easy to explain... I usually modify an old sketch that I've already used for another product, like a greeting card. Sometimes you stare at it and can't come up with anything. But sometimes, after a while, everything suddenly opens up and you're finding hidden shapes of objects in everything! I suppose I did this a lot as a child. I had a rather dull childhood (see May 15 post), and besides playing with my bobbi pin collection and magnets, this was one of my favorite pastimes! It's like looking for animal shapes in clouds... and it helps to consider the negative space around objects. Negative space is the area an object doesn't occupy - there are shapes in there, too! Everything on earth is made up of various shapes. As one of my first drawing teachers in college told me, learning to draw is really learning how to see - how true!

Lazy Sunday Afternoon

It's been a busy week... I had a little down time on Sunday afternoon and it was such a beautiful day, I decided to lounge around at a local lake and do some sketching. Field sketching is great exercise for an artist. You have to work really fast. It forces you to be loose and capture the essence of what you see. It also takes a lot of patience and can be REALLY frustrating. People keep moving around! Sometimes you feel like yelling out, 'Hey! I'm sketching here! Hold still!" But, of course, you don't - you don't want anybody to know you're sketching them! I sometimes work on a couple of sketches at the same time. There was this man with a cigar fishing. He kept getting his line tangled up.So I started this girl sunbathing and when she kept fiddling around with her cell phone, I went back to the man. I sometimes start a number of sketches and go back and forth between them. I also like to work on crummy notebook paper. It takes the pressure off of me, since I know I might end up with nothing worthwhile. Why mess up a perfectly good sketchbook when I have tons of old spiral notebooks left over from my kid's school days? These sketches aren't really for anybody to see but me.
Trees are great because they don't move. I've always had problems drawing them, though, and I don't think I'm very good at it. All those leaves are intimidating. The tough part is figuring out what NOT to draw. I just try to get an impression.