Not Another Homeschool Blog

Sketch a day - day 7 I went to the grocery store for two reasons... lunch, and cash-back. Cash back is awesome because I don't have to pay atm fees to spend my money, and since I had to pay the dude repairing the woodpecker holes in my house today, I needed cash. (I probably won't use him again, with one of the reasons being he doesn't take checks.  Who wants to go to get cash two days in a row to get enough money to pay someone?) Anyway, I said to the cashier I need $100 cash back, is that possible? She replied, the max is $50, but I can split your bill. Cool.. Cool.  So she rang up my bill with a few things left on the conveyor belt. As I went fishing in my wallet for my debit card she got annoyed.  I was trying to find the right debit card, for our joint account, since I didn't want to take it from my main shopping account because most of the money was for house repairs. She replied in an annoyed voice... "that's a lot of cards".  I apologized...

Sketch a day- day 6 I was busy today updating my computer with the next mac version and then trying to get back photos from when my computer died... I think my daughter's sweet 16 photos are gone... going to try to snipe a photo or two from people who were there. My sketch today is something I do naturally and often.  It is a sketch of my bedroom floorpan.  It is a stupid room.  The most obvious place for a bed, between two windows is under a vent and right next to the bathroom.  I don't like that.  There is a huge sitting area with a slated ceiling like a huge dormer.  My bed is there now, top photo, but I have been bored with it. The biggest problem is where the cable jack is is also stupid... on the wall behind the couch in the upper photo and so I can't really see that from anywhere that it makes sense to put the bed. It is an enormous room really, just poorly planned.  The people across the street actually took half the area where we put...

sketch a day- day 5 It's Sunday, and I really have no deep thoughts. So here is my day 5 sketch of the day.  I tried to portray a couple of celebrities, and then a random person from a magazine.  Portraits are really not my thing! Can you name the two celebrities?   Good luck!  Fighting the urge to delete these.  Not my best work. 

sketch a day-day 4 I looked at some of my work from 25 years ago today... It was in the garage.  I am going to toss it, after taking a few pictures because it is all charcoal and has become muddy over the years.  Still, there are some good things about it. I will take some photos before trashing it. One thing I noticed is that there is a slight slant to everything I draw.  I think it is because I don't sit still and I don't hold my head still... I move around and kind of lean to one side, so there is also a slight lean in my work.  You can see it in this candlestick drawing from my mantle.  Also the middle candle is out of perspective because I drew it first and then when I moved my persecutive, I did not change it. But... nothing in life is perfect, and interestingly enough, my most slanted, imperfect pieces have been purchased (long ago, when I drew regularly).... so there is clearly beauty in not getting it quite right. Perfection is a dangerous thi...

Today's art education video was on doing a still life . I've done tons of still-life's over the years, but I am not fond of them. They are always so fake and contrived.  For example, where in life are you going to find an apple, next to a vase, next to a wooden model?  Only in an art classroom. That kind of unnatural situation often bothered me when I was studying art in school.  I think the situation that bothered me the most is when a nude model stood on a ladder. Who is going to climb a ladder naked in real life? No one. That's who. So, my still life includes items that really were on my desk and arranging them, meant only moving them a few inches so I could get them all into an arrangement that would fit on the paper. A real-life-still life. sketch a day- day 3 Still life reminds me of that old Sesame street song "one of these things do not belong here". Remember that? I have learned in life, that sometimes it is good to be out of place in the worl...

sketch a day- day 2 In the art video I watched today , the artist instructor demonstrated how to draw the human figure and understanding how the body works and what shapes it is generally made up from.  So, today's sketch is of a model dummy I have that interestingly enough is not comprised of the same shapes that he demonstrated in the video. Something he said in the video caught me as very interesting. He said that an artist has two talents... the first is being able to remember what things look like and to draw them from memory. I am and have always been weak in that. The second is in being able to see in a way that most people cannot, to break down an item, a figure, etc, and draw it on paper in a realistic way. That is my strength.  I have always happily leaned on it. I always thought that my talent was what it was and that I could not fix the missing part of my artistry and learn to draw from memory. But according to this instructor, I was wrong. It seems that th...

Sketch a day, day 1 I am trying to force my creativity by doing a sketch a day.  I am using some free video lessons by  http://www.jerrysartarama.com/art-lessons/free-art-instruction-videos.html to inspire me.  I used a lesson today on using shapes to draw buildings... this is the house across the street from me.  You could say I am homeschooling myself in art... kind of as a refresher. This sketch took all of 10 minutes.  I am sure I will revisit it later and add ink. As I was drawing, the news was on. I got distracted from my task when I heard the phrase "the devil in the White House". They were interviewing an elderly early voter who was saying he was voting a straight Republican  ticket because he dislikes the devil in the white house. I had a personal heart response to his comment. It hurt my feelings. I've heard presidents called a lot of things by fellow Americans but never the devil. I couldn't help but wonder what in him made him view Obama ...