EDM challenge #59 draw a sign of spring or fall

I was outside today, working in the yard, trimming trees etc. My husband was trimming back some of the roses and when I turned around, in the middle of our lawn was the biggest leaf off of our sycamore trees. It was part green, part brown and yellow. Although Sycamores don't really do the color change thing, it does mean that fall is coming and they are getting ready to shed their tired, dried leaves. I grabbed it and ran into the house to do another quick watercolor, I just love leaves. I can't wait for the liquid ambers and pistache trees to do their thing, even here in Southern California.

More quick watercolors from Simple Simons

I took some pictures of people sitting near by me the day I had lunch at Simple Simons. I decided to do some quick watercolors of them today for practice with painting people. I have a hard time painting people in person because they often feel uncomfortable with me staring at them for extended periods of time. I have to get better at painting from a glance.

EDM challenge #86 Draw a traffic or street sign

Well, I know that this might seem like a stretch but I found this sign on my walk today, it was on the street and I felt it qualified. It is really a "sign of the times" as all the surrounding mountains, that we rode our horses across, are now filling up with huge homes. Its a bitter sweet thing, sad to see the natural landscape go from wild trees and bushes to a sea of homes but it does help send our house prices up and up. Since Jennifers accident I had to get rid of the horses so I don't feel the loss as much as I might have if we still owned them.

EDM challenge # 47 draw one of the past challenges

I thought I would paint one of the flamingos we saw on one of the sketchcrawls to the zoo. I sketched them there but also took tons of pictures, they are so vividly colored that they don't look real. They look as though someone got ahold of a can of orange spray paint. It reminds me of a picture in an old time-life book where these two men are holding a huge bird and they are painting it bright pink so it will stand out in the group of white birds. They would never do that today! The thought being is that these flamingos look like that painted bird from my past. I might like to do some large paintings of these interesting birds whose knees bend backwards and they drink and eat with their heads upside down!! That is talent.

EDM challenge # 61 draw a group of two or more

I had started this sketch back at the week long camp we took Jennifer to in Long Beach. All of that weeks activities are centered around water sports. As I waited for her to get back from a sailing adventure I noticed these life jackets all lined up. Almost like a patriotic red and blue army of men waiting for the assignments. They looked so pretty all lined up, hoping to be choosen to go out.

Another spot in Riverside

Ok, well I am off and running, I had a free day so I thought I would go and start my painting of Riverside. I decided to go have lunch at one of my favorite spots in a historic area of Riverside. It is in a open air shopping area right off of the Mission Inn. It is so beautiful, and there are tons of painting opportunities. I had a wonderful lunch and the wind was just softly blowing as I sat and painted the front of the resturant which is located in a retrofitted building made of old brick. Here is a picture of my wonderful lunch, the people sitting around me probably thought I was crazy taking a picture of my sandwich before I ate it. Also, Riverside had local artists paint giant oranges which were placed all over the downtown area for viewing. It was wonderful to see them and I was hoping to photograph them but I might be too late. Here is the one by the Mission Inn. They were all different and very clever. I hope they do it again.

EDM Challenge # 84 draw a store in your town

I think this is the right challenge number, if not I have to change it. I am so glad Karen choose this as our weekly challenge, it made me want to jump back into sketching and painting. I love the opportunity to get to really see my city and paint it. I am going to take this as my challenge this year, to really get out and journal about and paint the area. Thanks Karen, for getting me excited. I always wish that in California we had more history like they do back east. We do have history here, I just need to go find it. This is my first painting of the area, the local fresh produce store. Gless Ranch has been growing and shipping oranges from Riverside since 1907. Although many of the orange groves have made way for urban sprawl there are a few patches left, we even have a historic citrus belt where the groves still produce. The packing houses and the train stations have mostly been converted to upscale resturants now but they still stand. Here is the website for all interested Gless Ranch

Another mural for a little girls room

I had a job due today that was a Raggity Anne and Andy, it snuck up on me and I had to overnight it to the job site. That usually doesn't happen to me since I watch my schedule closer than that but there you have it. I got this one done and a train done too which needed to be on the same job site. After I paint them they are cut out and are ready to be shipped.I about had a heartattack when they called me and asked where the murals were, ahhh. I thought the job had been pushed back to the 25th but ...no. I scrambled so that I could get them done in time to ship since they have to arrive tommorrow. I hate that feeling in my stomach when the odds are stacked against me, but ohhh that feeling when I get it done. Wow. Today I am so thankful for my husband who helped me complete my mission !

Doodling

I have this habit of drawing horse heads on every scrap of paper within my reach if I have a writing utensil and there is a blank spot. Everyone who knows me laughs at the fact that I leave a trail wherever I go. My old boss used to request I stopped delivering his phone messages with horses all over them. LOL I find that if I have a minute where my mind is allowed to wander or I am bored or the phone rings, I start to doodle these horses, some heads, sometimes full bodied. Most often prancing proudly with long flowing manes. At our house, my husbands desk is full of these signature horses. I have done this as long as I can remember, I think I should just add them to my signature, because they practically are. It almost like the old saying "Leroy was here" remember that? Anyway, at wetcanvas they were having a carousel horse challenge, so I printed the photo with intentions of drawing it in colored pencil. The next day I was sitting at my desk and I was talking on the phone and I started to doodle, of course the horse head was first then I started to draw the carousel horse. Well since it was just mindless drawing I didn't have room to do more plus I was using a really bad pencil that just happened to be on the desk. I ended up with this partial head, and the other one I always draw. I was wondering, what do you doodle when your on the phone or still for a minute? Do you have a something you draw over and over. The other thing I draw is a flower, over and over. Let me see your doodles too! I must make a correction to this post, although my carousel horse was just started as a doodle, I understand it did get a bit fussy with the shading, although it started as a doodle. I like to shade my doodles sometimes, but often they are just line drawings. So whatever or however you doodle, I would love to see them. The little horse head is my signature doodle.

WC colored pencil challenge

The in the WC colored pencil forum started posting monthly challenges. I think this will be great since we now have so many challenges going on it has become a challenge to do them at all, so by giving me a whole month is great. The picture was nice but my scan really turned out loosy, I mean the picture might not be perfect but the colors are much better in person. HONEST!

Vacation sketches

I did do some sketching while I was on vacation but I found that we ran so much of the time and I didn't have time to sketch too much. I also felt like it took time away from Randy and I, it was our first vacation alone so I didn't want it to take away from our time together. I did draw during a very romantic dinner(see above) at an Italian Resturant and it took so much time, so I decided to put it away. We had such a fabulous time, we did everything we could find to do in Nashville Tennessee. It was beautiful and everything worked out perfectly. Here are a few sketches of our trip. The first one is of people at the airport,then a sketch of people getting on the plane and the one next to it is of the steak house resturant which we saw from the balcony in our room. We stayed at the Gaylord Opry Resort and it was really beautiful.
They were also having the National Championship Tennessee Walking Horse Show while we were there so we thought it would be fun to drive to Shelbyville (every city has a ville at the end) and watch the show. When we finally got to the show they had just finished the morning section and wouldn't have another event until 7pm, well we were so dissappointed but decided to wait until the night show. We bought our tickets and got to see two classes when they made an announcement that the judges and the trainers were having some trouble coming to an aggreement on something so they were putting a hold on the show and if we would wait patiently it would start in a few minutes. I ended up drawing the heads of the people in front of me. Well 45 minutes later they were still fighting and they ended up canceling the show for that night, I was really mad. I thought about how sad it was for all those kids that were there trying to show. It has to do with animal protection laws and what some of these trainers and owners do to the horses to win. I guess that some of the winner were disqualified and it started a big fight. I can understand them trying to stop this practice of soring the horses front legs to make them walk like they do, its kind of like the whole steroid thing, it became the unwritten law that to win you had to take steriods and the ones that were doing it the right way weren't winning. The same thing with these horses I think, they just arent as showy unless they are in pain, sad, so sad what we distort in the name of beauty!