2026 - arting - quick art share

Starting to define the elements better.
Haven't decided where to put the bushes.
Do Camila flower in the spring?

r ransom wrote:Starting to define the elements better.
Haven't decided where to put the bushes.
Do Camila flower in the spring?

That is coming along NICE!!!  You do amazing work!  --Tess

A ton of my friends are doing the "Ask AI to draw a caricature of me based on what it knows about me and this picture" thing. I thought it might be more fun to draw my own caricature. Of course, I've never drawn one before. And I doodled this in about 33 minutes. But, it was still a lot of fun to think about the sort of things I like to define myself by and how I could incorporate them in. This totally isn't done. Maybe it never will be. Maybe I'll paint it for fun. But, for now, here's my quick art share!

Maybe you want to draw your own non-AI caricature!

Some days art doesn't work

r ransom wrote:Some days art doesn't work

r ransom, that is a GEEETARR!!  And it looks wonderful.  I think, often times, the artist is their own worst critic.  I know I am mine.  Art is seen by the viewer through their own eyes & never that of the artist.  You really do amazing work!!!  -Tess

Tess Misch wrote:

r ransom wrote:Some days art doesn't work

r ransom, that is a GEEETARR!!  And it looks wonderful.  I think, often times, the artist is their own worst critic.  I know I am mine.  Art is seen by the viewer through their own eyes & never that of the artist.  You really do amazing work!!!  -Tess

Laughing because it looks like a geeetaaarrr.  It's supposed to be a ukulele.   Which looks a bit guitar shaped.

Maybe tomorrow, something for scale to make it looks smaller.

Thanks for words of encouragement.  

r ransom wrote:

Tess Misch wrote:

r ransom wrote:Some days art doesn't work

r ransom, that is a GEEETARR!!  And it looks wonderful.  I think, often times, the artist is their own worst critic.  I know I am mine.  Art is seen by the viewer through their own eyes & never that of the artist.  You really do amazing work!!!  -Tess

Laughing because it looks like a geeetaaarrr.  It's supposed to be a ukulele.   Which looks a bit guitar shaped.

Maybe tomorrow, something for scale to make it looks smaller.

Thanks for words of encouragement.  

Do you play? Either guitar or ukulele?  My daughter is self-taught, and guitar is one of my favorite instruments. My grandfather played the ukulele and I have very fond memories of that as well.  --Tess

Just starting
https://permies.com/t/367040/art/Talk-ukulele

r ransom wrote:Just starting
https://permies.com/t/367040/art/Talk-ukulele

That is SO awesome!!!  My daughter wants to get one and learn to play.  We keep our eye out for one at the thrifts we frequent.  She's pretty good at tuning, she has her own guitar now. She has been playing the guitar, keyboard & various other instruments since she was in K.  Her first was a recorder and then on from there!

My grandson has a few instruments available to him, as I truly believe that exposure and exploration instill a deeper appreciation and interest than just saying: "here, play this or do this (x activity)"  We homeschool and some days are full of adventure & wonderment and others not so much.  But that is homeschooling.

Learning as an adult, for me, was much harder.  I wanted to learn to play flute.  I gave it just a few weeks, but lost interest due to circumstances.  I hope that your ukulele endeavors play out well for you!!  --Tess

I tossed caution to the wind, pulled out my hand-made watercolors, and painted my caricature! I really enjoyed painting my shirt (and other details) with the cochineal lake paint I made. It's so pretty!

Nicole Alderman wrote:I tossed caution to the wind, pulled out my hand-made watercolors, and painted my caricature! I really enjoyed painting my shirt (and other details) with the cochineal lake paint I made. It's so pretty!

Nicole!! That is wonderful!!! Really amazing...  --Tess

Charcoal preliminary sketch.

Now i see it in a photo, the head shape is way off.

The back panel is on!
The buttons were done first and it was very hard. I'm really glad I have a stash of vintage repair needles. The small curved one was needed in several spots.
(I wish I had some sharper, surgery ones but I made do)

The end is in sight and its looking how I had hoped.

So slow!

Good thing oil paints stay wet on the palette for days.

Done

Good Job of making a sphere look spheroid, Raven!

I've been working on pencil drawings of cylinder shapes. One was a tin with its lid offset. I managed adequately round, but my drawing lid isn't going to fit on it's drawing base, even though in real life they are a team. I am *very* much at the "don't sweat the small stuff" point. I am looking for the joy and fun of drawing - I'm trying hard, and exercising my brain/body connections, and consider it my artist's point of view that is important, not perfection. I have a camera if I want perfection!

It's done! Im not so good on redoing the tacks but I am happy with it otherwise.
The cat is already making threats towards the repairs but we'll see how they hold up.
Making the big patches in advance was totally the way to go and I'm glad to get this chair back in some sort of respectable state, at least for a few more years.

I decorate the covers of my pocket day planners. Here's the one for January:



Here's February's. I didn't want to feel cold.



Here's March's calendar, in process. I'm currently in New Mexico and I look at cactus every day. I think I will be doing some line-work with green ink pens on this one.

I wasn't going to share as it's about to be rubbed out.  Again.

But not all art works and I can learn from failure.

Wrapped-up my March '26 calendar cover this morning.

So I finally got a chance to tuck my little bit of "pre-artist-charcoal" into our wood stove. I admit I had to fix a fire tool to do it safely.

I had sat longer than I recall the instructions saying to and that didn't effect the first pieces which had been tucked in the can, but the second round with pieces that had been out in the air and were likely drier, broke apart more.

I also missed the part about "pencil" thickness - my pieces are thicker, but not unreasonably so.



I did a quick doodle as a test and was quite pleased. The charcoal held together nicely, but it also marked the paper well, and I could smudge it with my finger to get a shading effect.



Did you people know that some artists use a special paper for drawing with charcoal. My artist friend insisted on brining me a piece. Of course, now I'm afraid to use it.

I haven't had a lot of energy for art the last few weeks, but I did get pictures of the drawing practice I did. The skull is a statue an acquaintance gave my son when she had to move across the country.  It was very hard to get the 3D effect, particularly the nose bone. I decided to try some easier subjects. Doesn't every permie keep a 7/16th combination wrench in their living room?

Not much, just gesso for a new project

Reminds me of my desire to learn about oil gesso ground but alas, I am starting painting tomorrow so this will have to do.

More composition and value rough studies

Finished this calendar cover for a friend of mine, leaning hard into "April Fool's Day" for this one...

Getting closer

I did get the other pair of bags from the vintage canvases finished.
I played it a bit less safe with colour blocking in the leather panels and I think I like the bolder look.
There was a small rip in this canvas and luckily it was where I just integrate a patch as part of the design.
I think these will mostly go as gifts.

Slight changes
I've run out of time, so this has to be good enough

I make illustrations and I just printed a new batch of notebooks with new designs. Permies might appreciate the chicken notebook - it's my personal favourite.

Colour study with limited palette and hand made Beam watercolours

Finished my personal calendar book cover for April '26. It's the Creature From the Black Lagoon.

Finished two more calendar booklet covers for a friend of mine. I feel like May was a bit on the "phoned-in" side of things, while June turned out all right.

Those calendar pages are wonderful.

Love the creature from the black lagoon! That was a favorite from my kid's childhood. We introduced him to monsters, and the grimm tales early, so he could know that monsters, whatever their form can be defeated.

Here's my personal calendar for May '26. I was thinking of the Aztec and Incan empires while I was making it.

If i didn't tell you it's lilacs, it would be hard to tell.

This is a 20 min study, mostly to test my new en plein air colour palette.   We can only take so many tubes of paint outside, so I want to choose ones that can give me the mood I feel as well as wide range of colours.   I learned that it needs additional purple to achieve a lilac colour.

in preparation for the 25th of may

r ransom wrote:If i didn't tell you it's lilacs, it would be hard to tell.

I thought art was supposed to be "in the mind's eye".

I think you've caught the "lilacness" of lilac - the slight curve of the spray of flowers and the impression of the whole being made up of smaller parts.

Jay Angler wrote:

r ransom wrote:If i didn't tell you it's lilacs, it would be hard to tell.

I thought art was supposed to be "in the mind's eye".

I think you've caught the "lilacness" of lilac - the slight curve of the spray of flowers and the impression of the whole being made up of smaller parts.

Thank you for kind words

Mind's eye.  
I'm not sure that's what I want from my art.  I like art that looks like the thing it is (representational), allowing the minds eye to step beyond that and remember a story.  If the mind's eye has to figure out what it's looking at, there is no energy to go beyond.... at least with my lazy mind.

But, I figured it's better than painting each individual flower on the lilac spray. And I have lots of room to improve my lilac painting skills.

r ransom wrote: Mind's eye.  
I'm not sure that's what I want from my art.  I like art that looks like the thing it is (representational), allowing the minds eye to step beyond that and remember a story.  

For example, Robert Bateman is a painter, and his paintings are so detailed they could be a photograph. Some painters, like Salvador Dali (Surrealist), I can sort of appreciate as being very "different", but, like you, I'm not sure I'd have any idea what was behind it!  Some of our ancestors cave paintings were somewhere in between there. I could see the story of the hunt, or at least the story of what they were hoping to have for dinner!

I don't feel like I have to do so much absolutely accurate detail when I try to draw, like Bateman, in order to communicate to others, because it would frustrate me and make me not want to do it at all. The picture I posted above of the wrench is not anywhere near what Bateman would have drawn, but I think most people  would recognize that it's a wrench.

I totally understand that you may desire to get closer to what Bateman is capable of. I simply want to reassure you that what I saw as "lilac" was enough for me to feel you have represented it honestly and fairly. Striving for "better" is a wonderful thing, so long as it doesn't take the joy of creating away.