Saturday's Six Minute Sketch

I'm in the process of building a new website, after I finish it, I'll probably blog there as well, but for now it is just in its development state, yesterday I was working on it all day.  Registering a domain name, installing wordpress, picking a theme, and now trying to figure out how to integrate a pay pal shopping cart.  I also need to upload images of all my paintings.  Needless to say, I didn't have much time for painting.

So, for today I'll post this sketch I did a few days ago.  I timed myself at 6 minutes.  Its a sketch of my daughter, I feel like it would have looked a lot better with double the time, but I wanted to see what I could do in six minutes.  My daughter says she looks like a "Walker" (another name for Zombie, from The Walking Dead).

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Fine Art America is the place to go for Prints of all my Paintings.

 

My etsy shop is the place to go to buy my originals and request commissioned work. A few select prints are available here as well!

Mushroom from My Mind

Practice makes perfect, so they say.  I'm not so sure that's true with art, since in a sense art is never really perfect, there is always some room for improvement.  So lets just say practice makes better.

So anyway, yesterday I had an off day, I spent most of time updating information on various websites and such, and didn't make time to do art in the morning.  I told myself it was okay because I was going to go to an artist league meeting and would start a new painting there.  Then a friend dropped by unexpectedly and stayed and talked for a long time, and soon it was too late for the meeting.

Still, I wanted to at least do a quick sketch, I started sketching my tea kettle, but wasn't really inspired by that so I stopped before I got finished with it.

I decided that it was a good day to do a pencil sketch from my imagination instead of drawing from life, but I didn't have much time left, I had only a few minutes before it was time to leave with the family for church.

So I ended up doing this quick sketch of a mushroom, or is it a toadstool, or a fairy hut?  Well, mine was pretty plain looking, just a basic sketch, no dots on it, no colors, no frogs sitting on it or butterflies hovering nearby, but it was still a little touch of practice on a day when I would otherwise have not exercised my artistic muscle at all. So here is today's sketch, more of just a little doodle.

Thank you for reading! If you liked what you see, please consider following this blog with Google Friend connect, or follow me on Google+, or if you prefer, you can follow by email and get notified each time the blog is updated. See the right hand column to follow in any of these ways! I welcome your suggestions on how to make this blog more interesting to you!

Fine Art America is the place to go for Prints of all my Paintings.

 

My etsy shop is the place to go to buy my originals and request commissioned work. A few select prints are available here as well!

Somewhere in Another Universe...

Somewhere, in another universe, under a yellow sky...  strange creatures drift by over the rooftops.

Watercolor pencil on Vellum the color on this phone photo doesn't do it justice.

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She Sells Seashells...

Can you say the following poem five times fast?

She sells seashells by the seashore.
The shells she sells are surely seashells.
So if she sells shells on the seashore,
I'm sure she sells seashore shells.

Honestly, I stumble when I try to say that quickly, fortunately though, this blog is about my art, not my verbal gymnastics.  So I don't need to recite rhymes about seashells, I just need to sketch said seashells from the seashore.  So, this was last night's seashell from the seashore sketch.

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Turn Up the Heat

Oh well!  Things don't always turn out the way we want.  Yesterday I wanted to finish my "Inlets to Illusion" painting and photograph it.  I did manage to finish it, but I didn't get the picture taken while I had good light. You see, I don't have studio lights for my art, but my porch just so happens to get perfect lighting for photographing a painting, but only for about an hour or two a day.  So I have my porch set up for it, with nails in several places on the front door so that I can hang the paintings there, set up my tripod, and take the picture.  Well, yesterday I let that "golden hour" pass, today I'll be at church during the "golden hour", so I'll have to try tomorrow.

Now, that painting took months to finish, and it didn't require a lot of realistic drawing because it was mostly abstract op-art.  So I have been feeling out of practice on my drawing.  I decided to sketch something, I looked around my house for something to set in front of me and sketch.  I decided to sketch my space heater.  Now bear in mind that I didn't use any rulers or vanishing points, I just looked at the heather and drew freehand.  I also didn't spend a lot of time at it, it was just a quick sketch, for practice at drawing what I see. The heater has wood casing, and a decoratively curved lip in front on the top and bottom I struggled with that lip, I think I cane closer to getting it right with the bottom.  I realize I should have cleaned up my eraser lines more, but as I said, it was just for practice.

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Somewhere, in the Far Reaches of Space

OH NO!!!  Somewhere on a distant planet, in the far of reaches of outer space, there's an Alien swimmer who forgot their towel on the branch of sphere tree.

Okay, okay, its not outer space, its just the space between my ears, and the planet exists only in my mixed media sketch book... but still...

Alien Landscape, by Vicki Maheu
Watercolor pencils on vellum.  Copyright Vicki Maheu, all rights reserved.

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Word for the Year

Have you noticed the trend on blogs of selecting a word for the year?  I have been debating what word I want for my year, it could be "create", it could be "vibrancy", both of those struck me as worthy of being selected... but instead, I am choosing a word that might come as surprise to many.

That's right, my word is discipline.  Why? Because its what I need in so many parts of my life.  I need it in the area of health and nutrition, I need it in the area of housekeeping, I need it in the area of spirituality, and I desperately need it in the areas of art.

If I am going to improve my art and see my life as an artist grow, I simply must discipline myself to work on it regularly.  I love doing it, but so often I put it off, and don't start.  I need to at least sketch four or five times a week, but preferably be working on more than just simple sketches and putting in time on my paintings, try new mediums, and learn new techniques.

So my word for 2015 is Discipline.

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Something Old for the First Day of the New Year

Well, I was glancing through my sketchbook earlier, and I found a sketch I completed over a year ago, when Al, the man who facilitates an art group I was part of challenged me to do my best to draw him in no more than two minutes.  Well, I don't have a photograph of him to show you by comparison, but I can tell you that my daughter, who hasn't seen the gentleman for a very long time, saw it and right away asked, "Is that Al?"

Sketch of Al Mulkey, by Vicki Maheu

This reminds me that I need to get back into frequent sketching, and sometimes putting a time limit on it doesn't hurt anything, after all, by limiting the time spent so severely, it forces the artist to pick the important features that identify the subject, it kind of trains your mind what is important to create a general likeness.

Of course, this is just a sketch, if I was trying to do a real portrait I would take more time, use more details and do some shading, but for just a quick sketch, I think it turned out pretty good.

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Every Day in May, May 10

Today's challenge was to draw something creepy.  Being the die-hard Whovian that I am... this is what I came up with!

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Every Day in May, Day 9

Today's EDiM challenge was simple.  Draw a lock.
Since it was simple, I decided to keep it that way and drew a very simple lock in a very dimple medium (graphite).

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Every Day in May Days Four through Eight

Well, I fell way, way, behind in the Every Day in May Challenge, so tonight I made it all up in one night.

Here are the sketches:

May 4th

May 5th

May 6th

May 7th

May 8th

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Every Day in May #3

So its Day number 3 of the Every Day in May challenge, and today's topic is "Something that Represents Joy"

This was easy to think of.  I am trying to limit these EDiM sketches to 15 or 20 minutes most days, so that I still have time for my other art, after all, I know that the Gallery owner who shows my work wants me to come up with a painting that has something to do with wine... plus he said he'd like to see more small scale landscapes that he could sell for $100 or less.  (Basically that means 8x10 or smaller).

I also have an order for a pet portrait to get done... so I can't spend hours on these sketches.

Today's sketch took around 15 minutes, coloring included... and it shows, I mean its not straight, the form and perspective are a bit off, its too skinny proportionally... but anyway, here it is:

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The "Chrome Monster" in progress.

I just thought I'd share a picture of my latest piece in-progress.  I'm jokingly calling it the "Chrome Monster" because it is so absolutely loaded with shiny, reflective chrome, which is a challenge for me to paint realistically.  I think the real name of the piece will be "When Cars Were Cool" or something like that.

Anyway, all I've done so far is outline everything, paint some lines to indicate main value areas, and start blocking in some of the darkest value areas.  I went a little furter than that with the hub cap though, and blocked in all of the main value areas except for the brightest highlights, which I will save for last.

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Homeschool Co-op Parent Room Sketches

Today was homeschool co-op for my kids, and in my down time before my first TA assignment, and in my down time after my last Teaching assignment, I sketched things I saw around me. A pedestal in the chapel area, a fire sprinkler, my pencil sharpener, and other items.  Later at home I continued sketching.  A lamp, my shoe, my hand...

Anyway, I've been wanting to draw from life more, and today I got in lots of sketches, all from real objects in front of me. Some of the objects had very straight lines, and I could have benefited from a straightedge or ruler, but all were just done free hand.
Here are today's sketches:

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In the Spotlight, and some more Eagle Studies

Several days ago I signed up for a virtual interview with the website "Artpromotivate" hoping to be featured in their "Artist Spotlight" column.  Now, this isn't really a competition sort of thing, if you follow the rules as far answering their questions, and giving them all the information they ask for, the feature you, so I wasn't surprised to be featured, I made sure to follow all of their guidelines, every single one.  What did surprise me was how quickly they featured me.  They say there is often a wait of several weeks, but I was featured only days after submitting my interview.  Maybe it was a slow month for them as far as submissions, or maybe they liked my work or my answers.  Either way, it is good publicity for me as an artist!

You can find my article HERE.

In other news... I've been working on more Eagle Studies, and they can be seen below.

This is the same sketchbook page that I posted earlier, but I added another eagle at the bottom right.

Here is the start of another sketchbook page.  The  open beak and unusual head angle was a challenge!

Some Eagle Studies

Well, as I mentioned in an earlier post, I want to really do some studies on Eagles, so I've been sketching them and making observations about their proportions and such. Here are the first of my sketches. I will probably sketch something else in the empty corner of the paper.

 

Here is my sketch book page with notes about my observations, I think the eagle at the top right looks better, and I think my notes about the eye and beak explain why, however, the heads are at slightly different angles and that could also be the main reason. Or maybe the one on the right is just a more handsome bird. If you can't read the notes, just click on the picture, you should be able to see a larger version. If its still too small to read, this might help: Basically they are just observations about the proportions. from the end of the beak the base is about the same distance as from the base of the beak to the eye. Then from the end of the beak to the pupil, about the same as from the pupil to the back of the head at eye level. I also noted that the beak opening lines up with the front of the eye, and that I didn't do that on the sketch to the left, which is whey the eagle on the left looks like he has too big a mouth.
Below I noted that the eagle from shoulder to where his tail begins, is about the length of three head-and-neck lengths.