Good Things

Good things are churning in my head this morning. I think that's why I have a monster of a headache. I woke at 5 this morning, an idea for a painting and a fun children's book character firmly locked into my mind. The character, already named Rigoberto (shout out Todd) I can sketch this afternoon, and I can began preliminary sketches for the painting as well. I hesitate to do too much advance work on the painting, I've been known to get bored quickly with a subject and been satisfied with small painted studies or even quick sketches. Problem is, I need a big square canvas and I live in the sticks. I wish inspiration had struck yesterday while I was in town birthday shopping with my son, but that's how it goes.

So what does that have to do with the picture, Michelle? Nothing. I just like this drawing. It's more than three years old and I think my skills have advanced a bit since then. Sometimes I want to clean it up, but maybe I like it because it's loose and messy. This is from a Eudora Welty book of photographs of Mississippi. I recently watched Oh Brother Where Art Thou and this same scene appeared. I've been thinking about it since.  I didn't have anything new to share this week (yet) so I decided to hit the archives. 

Have a blessed week.

Dry Spells

Sometimes all it takes to wreck a creative streak is one bad drawing. Like this, for example:

     This one, a rather blurry rendering of a Harris's Hawk, set me back weeks. I was quite happy with it at first and then I began to wish I'd never seen a ballpoint pen.
      Finally today, while watching season 4 of the IT Crowd and season 2 of 24 on an unexpected snow day, I picked up a sketchbook lying by the bed and began to draw what was between me and the TV. This:

This was drawn in a sketchbook with a bit of a theme; clothes, closets and accessories. (What? You don't have sketchbooks with themes?) I decided to include a couple of other entries to make up for the long dry spell. First the flyleaf, a drawing of clothing tags I had set aside to include on a scrapbook page one day. (between you and me, I don't really think that will ever happen). The second is of a pair of Thai watered silk ballet flats. In reality they are more olive colored but I didn't have the correct color in a ballpoint pen. 

(pardon the post-it note covering my address...)

Happy Snow Day everyone!