Jan31Art

Did laundry today, still have a couple more loads to do.  Beautiful day today, not a cloud in the sky, sunny and warm for the last day of January. Did a little shopping today but not much because Ron cut his ankle this morning, so he wasn't moving too fast today.

Jan30Art

Friday night date night tonight was at O'Charley's, we had steaks this time instead of Prime ribs… I hadn't had one of their steaks in a long time and had forgotten how really good they are, tender, flavorful… melt in your mouth good.  No hockey this weekend, so we're thinking we'll go to the gun club and do some shooting.

Jan29Art

New glasses today, bi-focals… may take a little time to get used to them, kind of a red-ish brown color.  Consult with the oral surgeon today, I need 4 implants, the insurance company will pay 60% for 1 the other 3 are mine responsibility… or around $6,000.00 yikes.  I'm having a bit of sticker shock right now.

Jan28Art

I prefer my imaginary self portrait… drawing my 'real' self is no fun at all. As good as my flute practice went yesterday, I'm back to having trouble getting a sound out of it again.  Perhaps a bowl of ice cream and some chocolate will help.

Jan27Art

Flutes are very long and thin, probably should have waited to try this on a two page spread, as I ran out of room.  Practiced today and was able to make a noise, on a more regular basis, so that's progress.  If things are going well I can play 3 notes now, it's a start.

Jan26Art

Took my first private lesson tonight with my flute instructor Kristen, I like her very much, and with her help I managed to make a sound.  With practice this week I will hopefully be able to play two notes.  She was relieved to discover that I can already read music, she seems pretty enthusiastic that I'll be able to learn to play the flute, something I have always wanted to do. Sketchbook Skool bootcamp selfies, did the continuous line (sort of Blind contour).  looks quite like me actually.

Jan25Art

My UPC (battery backup) decided to die tonight, the alarm blaring intermittently until it drove me batty.  I'll have to go buy another one tomorrow, in the mean time if the power fails, so will my computer, fingers crossed that the clear skies continue and no lightening strikes tonight (not likely really).  Drew my heart shaped hole punch that I worked with all day today, working on a valentine card exchange.  The quote is just one I had saved, and has absolutely nothing to do with the drawing of the hole punch.

Jan24Art

Met with friends for dinner early, so that we could get a parking place at the 'Pack the House' night Hockey game, over 10,000 people made for an exciting crowd tonight, but didn't help our boys win.

Jan23Art

One more page of art supplies/tools, my water brushes and my tiny spray mister. The Niji waterbrushes are my favorites and take note that the cap twists on in a normal(American) fashion.  The Koi and Holbein brushes will make you a bit crazy at first because they screw on and off backwards to the way we are used to.  They both also are very wet brushes, if you want to mix a big wash, they are the ones to use as they gush water with hardly any encouragement other than gravity needed.
Ron and I went to see "American Sniper" this evening, an excellent movie, very moving I dare say there wasn't a dry eye in the theater when it was over.  Now I want to read the book as I understand it is even better than the movie.  If you have a chance to see it in the theater do so, big screen and surround sound just add to the effect.

Jan22Art

I ordered a bag via Zazzle with this sort of drawing of my watercolor pencils.  I was hoping the bag would work for a sketch bag, but it is too small for anything other than a small sketchbook and a couple of pens.  It will make a cute purse, and I've done a big version of this drawing to order a larger bag with this on it.

Jan21Art

Merry Christmas to me, I gave myself these markers for Christmas last year.  I love the colors, and the waterproof nature of them, and the fact that they don't bleed even on plain copy paper. I also got some yummy Pink ink that I've been playing with in my dip pen.

Jan20Art

Continuing with my art supply pages, here are my colored pencil. I'm not very good with them but I do like them. Got a call from the dermatologist today, two of them were ok but the one on my hand is cancer.  I have to go back on February 26 for them to remove it. Now I'm really glad I went to have it checked out.

Jan19Art

Martin Luther King Jr holiday today, I've got the day off without pay, Ron has to work.  Went to the dentist for him to have a follow-up look at how I'm healing, looked good so it only took about 10 minutes.  

Got out my pen box and lined them up to draw, spent a lot of time trying to match the color of my Coral Lamy, which is why I took a photo of them so that you could see the actual color of the pen, it is more pink than coral, but is a color I have no clue how to mix with the colors in my palette. I used each pen, to write the nib size under them, 4 colors of ink there too, left to right Noodlers Lexington Gray, Pilot Pink cartridge, Lexington Gray in the Red, Clear and Yellow Lamy, Platinum Sepia in the Coral Lamy, .07 leads in the Lamy mechanical pencil, and Pilot Yama Guri (wild Chestnut) in the Falcon. 

Jan18Art

I've been using my fishing tackle box to paint with lately, I like it because it is light weight and it has ten large sections for paint, and I added 3 half pans of colors I use from time to time.
It has not been a good weekend for our hockey team the best they could manage was a tie last night followed by a loss in the shoot out.  Friday and this afternoon the Toledo Ohio team beat us soundly, they came to play and were physical and kept playing hard even with a 5 point lead. Their goalie was on fire and our shooters only managed 1 goal against him today. Going to be a short season for our team if they don't get it together.

Book30 - Title Page

This is a Moleskine watercolor notebook, 8 1/2 x 5 1/2 Landscape format just like my last hand*book sketchbook, only more expensive. I rarely use these because of the expense, I was hoping to have another handmade journal made by now, but life distracted me and I haven't done it yet.

Jan17Art

The end snuck up on me, BAM this Hand*book watercolor sketchbook has ended.  I've cracked open a watercolor Moleskine for my 30th sketchbook for my daily drawings.  I keep other sketchbooks for classes, travel journals, note taking, doodling, I don't number them and rarely share the contents.  We lost the hockey game last night, headed out for another game tonight, and one on Sunday too.

Jan16Art

The clouds cleared out this afternoon, sunny skies we haven't seen all week were a welcome sight.  Today I caught Gracie napping, with my pen and my cell phone camera.  Headed to the hockey game tonight.

Jan15Art

Two hours in the chair today, the Novocain wore off around 4pm… I'm going to have trouble getting to sleep as it is hurting pretty good now. Time to feed the dog and see if laying my head down helps or not.

Jan14Art

Went to the eye doctor today, eyes are healthy, just need new glasses.  Will have them in 10 days or so.  Seems here the the sLOW country everything takes 10 days or more.  Hopefully my fuzzy eyesight will improve with the new glasses.

Jan13Art

The dermatologist recommended Aveeno for my dry itchy skin I must admit I've not paid much attention to my dry skin, other than having back scratchers to reach my itchy places.  Just a few days of using the Aveeno skin relief (purple stripe) has really made a difference, my itchy spot still bothers me but not as much as it did before.  Took the flute Ron got for me to the music store to have it checked out, tuned and repaired if needed.  I signed up for private lessons because I really want to learn how to play the flute, and taking lessons will motivate me to practice.

Jan12Art

I drew the elephant with Lexington Grey ink, and used a tombow grey marker to color him.  The marker ended up streaky and looked awful… so I took my mister spray bottle and did one spritz of water… and BAM the marker ran every which way, I jerked up the journal, frantically dug for my terry towel to collect the grey ink running off the page in 2 directions.  In addition the page immediately started to curl up from the water… found a binder clip to secure it flat and left for my committee meeting. Now that it's dry, I kinda like it, found the 'elephant' quote and call this page done.

Jan11Art

I see I had a smudge of red paint on my scanner… which I'll have to clean up, but not big enough to redo this one.  I need to get a mouse pad with a wrist rest, not because I need to rest my wrist but to keep me from moving my mouse off the keyboard tray and onto the floor.  I've actually done that more times than I should admit, the mouse survived the falls before but must have landed wrong last night because the 'click' sensor in it stopped working.  My computer came with a track pad, which I hooked up this morning and used for a while to read my emails, and delete my overnight load of spam emails, but I have never really liked those pads because you can't rest your hand on them.  So a trip to the store to buy a new mouse today.  Now I'm wondering what I can use the cool box it came in for.  

Jan10Art

Dropped my Apple mouse, I think I broke it. May have to go buy a new one… it has been a busy day today, with not much time to draw, and little inspiration either, so my spray bottle done with watercolor pencils and a Colin Powell quote is the best I can muster tonight.

Jan09Art

Boot Camp started this morning, with a still life of an apple.  No apples in my house, and I don't even want to go into why I can't have an apple… so I used my Dole Dippers, frozen strawberries covered in dark chocolate, no sugar added only 60 calories a package.  There isn't much to them, basically 4 half strawberries covered in chocolate.  1. is the package, 2 is one of the chocolate covered berries, 3 is a berry after I bit it in half 4 is a chunk of dark chocolate that fell off… the stains on the page is the actual chocolate, because I put the pieces on the page to draw them.  Usually I just pop the whole thing in my mouth, biting it in half to draw it kinda made a mess… but it was a learning experience and I did not want to have to do push ups.

Jan08Art

I picked the COLDEST day probably of the year in Charleston, to go to the dermatologist for a full body skin cancer scan.  I had a spot on the back of my left hand and another spot under where my watch band goes that I wanted to have looked at.  Well the doctor did a biopsy on those two, plus another spot on my left shoulder that she found.  I was kinda hoping the Dr would look at them and say oh, that's nothing… but that didn't happen.  I'm a little worried about it now, but results won't be available until 10 to 14 days from now.

Jan07Art #Je suis Charlie

#Je suis Charlie  Terrorists attacked a newspaper office this morning in Paris and murdered 12 unarmed innocent artists because they were offended, OFFENDED by the cartoons this newspaper publishes. My heart goes out to the families and friends of the murder victims.  I understand the French police have killed one of the terrorists responsible and have the other two in custody.  Do the French still execute people with a guillotine?  If not they should dig one up (preferably with a dull and rusty blade) and use it to execute these evil devil worshipers they deserve nothing better.

Jan06Art

Went to PetSmart to get Inky a cat tree, we threw out our old cat tree when Yeti died as we didn't expect to get any more cats.  We got it moved into the den between the parrot cages so she can watch the birds.  I even picked her up and put her on it… that lasted about 1/2 a second before she jumped off it.  As with everything else, she'll get to it in her own time.  She now allows petting for more than 2 strokes and she has pretty much quit putting her mouth on me, she still mouthes Ron, and swats at him… leading me to think her previous owner was a man, who played rough with her.  I'm betting a new girl friend came into the fellow's life and the kitty bit her and she said "It's me or the kitty!"  and the kitty ended up in the shelter.

Jan05Art

Long day today, getting back into the groove for work for Ron, and for me not having him around to help with the dogs.  I got eye doctor appointment set up for next Wednesday, my vision is getting worse and it's time to ditch the Wal-mart readers and get glasses for real.   Still in search of a dermatologist to check out some spots on my hands, thought I had one picked out but the number was not correct… so back to the search engines for a Dr.

Jan04Art

I got some Colorbox Chalk Ink yesterday at Michaels, I used two of the inks as the background on this page, the bottom left is a Martha Stewart corner punch, and some of the red ink from the colorbox on the page underneath so the punch would be visible… and finally the keys and locks brads I picked up to use someday on an art journal page.  Just having fun trying out new stuff.

Jan03Art

Went to Michaels today to pick up some little bottles of acrylic paint, got 2 yellows, 2 reds and 2 blues and the peach because I liked the color.  I'm wanting to try some in the toned journal I have, and I'm planning to make another journal  soon.  From time to time I check my number and corrected it to 23299 instead of 23297 skipped two days somewhere.

Jan02Art

The new cat is settling in… she thinks she likes laying on my scrap paper and pens… she doesn't like it if I type on the keyboard… I'm going to need a bigger desk (or a tidier one) if Inky is going to camp out on my desk.

Jan01Art

Spending a very quiet day today… watching football, hockey, more football.  I was also knitting, a bit of reading, and trying to think of a word to inspire me for the year ahead.  I couldn't come up with just one, so instead a page of words to inspire.  I've written down my goals for 2015 in another journal, I think I'd rather call them 'goals' instead of resolutions.  Do you make resolutions?  Do they last beyond the month of January?