Illustration Friday -- SONG

Where else can you sing to your heart's content? 

Illustration Friday: SIMPLE

My first attempt at an Illustration Friday topic. I asked myself, what are the bare necessities? Bread and water, sustenance -- it's that simple. 

Trying to be freer

One of my hopes in trying to learn watercolor is that I learn to be more free in my drawing style. I've always been a little a.r., which, consequently, also caused me to be reluctant to just sit down and draw. Teaching art has been very good for me in this regard, because as my blog subtitle suggests, I preach to them all the time about making a practice of regular sketching and drawing, and yet, I've been guilty of neglecting this wonderful exercise. I always envied the artists whose journals I perused and found page after page of wonderful sketches, drawings, ideas, collages, etc. I always felt like I had to have a big block of time to accomplish a drawing. I'm a big advocate of drawing from life, too, and so how could I draw without subjects?, I said. But Hannah Hinchman, the wonderful nature artist/journaler, helped change my mind on all that. Her books "A Life in Hand" and "A Trail Through Leaves" are wonderful guides as well as inspiration.
Anyway, so here I am, trying to loosen up and let the watercolor flow, let the pencil glide, and the pen go freely. The tree branch is an illustration from my head, and the dragonfly is actually an 8-minute drawing I did with my 7th grade class one day a couple of weeks ago. I cut it out and glued it on to this page because I didn't want to lose it. I have a dead dragonfly, along with various shells, leaves, sticks and other small heavily textured items to have the students do 5-minute drawings. Mine was 8 minutes because I liked it so I gave it another three minutes to fill in a few details. I added the color after I glued it to the page. 

Slightly askew

Okay, so I took my sketchbook along with me the other day when I had to take the kids to the orthodontist. I thought surely there would be someone in there engrossed in a magazine article whom I could sketch. But no, there was only one other person in the room, and he was on his cell phone, speaking Hindi or something like that. I couldn't draw him without making him suspicious or totally uncomfortable. So, I opted for the space across the room from me, deciding instead to work on my perspective drawing. It dawned on me later that I could have turned the other way and drawn the front desk area and the receptionist. Oh well, another day, another drawing.
The chair on the right was a different chair from the other one but it wasn't really that skinny -- I shortchanged it a little and they're both slightly askew. And the doorframe looks really bent out of shape on the top. But overall it's not too bad and I'm pretty happy with it.
I sketched the whole thing in pencil in about 15 minutes. Then I took it home later and added watercolor that night. I learned alot and had fun -- and that's the whole point!