Play in the puddles, of course! It was raining like crazy again last night and we lost power at the cottage, so I got out my sketchbook and in the early morning light through my window I drew a skelly playing in the rain. Cute, right? I used to love stomping around in the puddles after the rain when I was a little kid, didn’t you?
The internet can be magical. This morning I was wondering what to paint for a quick study and then I remembered the Eagle Cam that was featured on the npr website and voila! I had a subject all ready for me.
I put down my oatmeal, grabbed my pastels and a piece of paper and had about five minutes before she/he got up and presented me with a different view. I quit then because my breakfast was getting cold. Here’s the result from this morning. I think I’ll go back again this evening and see what kind of light is available when the sun is on other other side.
Eagle Nesting, study, 6×9″ pastel on paper by Marie Marfia
It got me thinking that there are probably a million web cams pointing to interesting scenes from all over the world. I don’t have to fly anywhere to find something to paint. I can sit at my monitor and pick something at random.
I decided to try to get some sketching in while I was waiting for my number to be called at the Tax Collector’s Office today.
It felt kind of funny to be one of the only people out of about fifty-some that wasn’t on a cellphone. It was just me, a couple of elderly ladies, and a toddler or two. The toddlers looked like they would have liked to play on a phone. The one that was directly in front of me settled for poking at the walker belonging to the old lady next to me.
I haven’t yet worked up the nerve to ask someone to let me take a picture of them to use to draw with. My friend Cynthia does this all the time. I swear I’ll do it. One of these days.
This was fun, though. The first one is of a young woman who was intent on her smartphone. She had lightning fast texting skills. The other was of a woman leaning on the counter to my left. I liked the way her shirt draped in folds across her back. These are the first of more sketches to come, I hope. I want to do more of it, whenever I can, instead of automatically going for a distraction, like sudoku puzzles or imgur.
I thought, “Gee, I’d like to do a portrait.” There’s always myself, of course, but it feels completely self-absorbed to do self portraits, oddly enough.
So I had this picture of Salvador Dali that I found on Wikiart and thought, that’ll do.
Do you suppose that lunacy is the price you have to pay for great paintings? It’s something to think about. I’m pretty sure I’d rather keep my marbles and just be a fair to middling painter, me.
So. Much. Walking.
I am recovered, barely, from walking up and down St. George Street and surrounds in St. Augustine last week, delivering art show postcards to anyone who would take them from me. Specifically, hotels, restaurants, shops, galleries, just anyone whose door was open, I walked in and said, “Hello! I’m having a Skelly Art Show at The Red Sable through the month of October and I’d love it if you could come.” This prompted one of three responses:
Coincidentally, this turned out to be a great way to narrow down my target market. What I found out is, they’re younger than I thought. Generally, the older the people were, the less interest they had in skeletons. The younger, the more likely they were to ask me for a stack of cards to give out to their friends.
It wasn’t hard to do, either, going door to door. It was just a lot of walking. And smiling. And talking, which, after about hour two, you have to take a break. So I sat down at a little table at the Bunnery and had an iced mocha with whipped cream on top and sketched out a little skelly who knew just I felt at that moment.
