Maximize Sunlight

The light source is a vital element in any painting or drawing. I believe it distinguishes a great piece of art from a mediocre one.

But, on the other hand, it is a known fact that kitties know how to make the best use of sunlight.

Here are my girls maximizing sunlight.

In the morning, in bed after breakfast.....


On the love-seat, in the middle of the afternoon....


When the mood strikes........



I think they need a job!

Sunday Sketches

Tulips make spring magical. They just show up and splash color on the winter barren landscape. Tulips make me smile.

Not only do they provide a gorgeous showing, but also when they begin to die their shapes and contours are wonderful. I am more prone to drawing or painting them at their senior stages.

Senior Tulips
Joanne Osband
watercolors
8" X 11"

Not A Portrait Painter

I have never considered myself a portrait painter, but every now and then I like the challenge of painting a portrait in watercolors.

Need I say my grandson is very cute?!

I have finally found a photograph of him that intrigues my "challenge quotient" and I find totally adorable. He is wearing his knit hat and donning his heart melting smile.

What I have learned so far is that I enjoy drawing; finding those shapes that define form. I began this watercolor painting with the base color of his skin. Waiting for the paint to dry before I continue.

I feel as if I am spending time with my grandson studying his features.

The first phase of the watercolor painting.....

Crossroads

Back painting with watercolors on my third bougainvillea rendition.

Total freedom! FUN!

But now at a crossroad.........what to do next?


My first thought was that I was going to do a line drawing over the watercolors.

Now, I am thinking of pastels over the watercolors.

Hmmmmm, which shall it be?

to be continued........

Sketchcrawl

On November 21st 2004, the very first global sketching marathon was held.

Yesterday, 21st November it was the 5th anniversary of the very first Sketchcrawl AND
the date of the 25th Worldwide Sketchcrawl.

What is a sketchcrawl?

This is what Founder Enrico Casarosa has to say about it back in February 2006.

The basic idea: to record nonstop everything I could around me with my pencil and watercolors. A drawn journal filled with details ranging from the all the coffee I drank to the different buses I took. After a whole day of drawing and walking around the city the name seemed quite fitting: "SketchCrawl" - a drawing marathon. The crawl was more tiring than I imagined but also more fun and exciting than I had thought. Giving yourself this kind of mandate for a full day changes the way you look around you. It makes you stop and see things just a tad longer, just a bit deeper … needless to say I loved it.

I soon figured out it was much more interesting to do the marathon with a group of artists instead of all by myself! And so SketchCrawl turned communal. After a whole day of drawing it proved to be amazingly interesting and inspiring to share and compare other people's drawings and thoughts. Different takes on our surroundings, different details, different sensibilities.

The next step was making the SketchCrawl a World Wide event: having people from different corners of the world join in a day of sketching and journaling and then, thanks to the Internet, having everyone share the results on an online forum.

So here it is, we have a website now, a few Crawls behind me, some by myself some with friends and artists from around the world … and hopefully plenty SketchCrawls ahead of us.

What is Your Favorite Subject Matter?

Katherine Tyrrell recently conducted a poll on her blog, Making a Mark, regarding artist's favorite subject matter.

Here are the results of the poll for which 173 responded.

24% Portraits/Figures
18% Scenes-landscapes/urban/interiors
16% Animals/wildlife
15% Anything and everything
12% Flowers/Botanical art
8% Still life
5% Conceptual/symbolic
3% Narrative (main-focus, story)


Katherine Terrell's analysis of the polls:

Portraits / Figures are the most popular subject for artwork. Around a quarter of the artists like drawing and painting people and figures best of all.

Add in animals/wildlife and creating portraits of living beings accounts for some 40%of respondents

The second most popular subject are scenes - whether these are landscapes, urban scenes or scenes of interiors - 18% prefer 'the big picture'.

People whose favourite subject is Animals and/or wildlife accounted for 16% of the responses.

In the middle of the poll, we find that 15% of the artists like to draw and paint anything and everything. This figure could have been a lot bigger. However I rather suspect that some of who tend to draw or paint more than one subject had to make a decision about whether we said we genuinely had no preference (ie anything and everything) or whether we did have a favourite.

Drawing or painting flowers or producing botanical art attracted 12% of the poll - which is 50% more than the number who voted for still life as being their favourite subject (8%)

Only 5% are motivated by ideas and involved in the development of conceptual or symbolic art. I'd expect to get a much higher percentage than this if I was asking full time professional contemporary artists. I'm wondering whether this very low percentage is because most readers of my blog are people who don't routinely produce art based on an idea.

Even fewer (3%) had any sort of narrative commonly running through their art.