The Lighthouse

I thought retirement would lend itself to days filled with little to do. Meaning I would have many hours available to do sketching and water colors. One month into this so called free time has given me a chance to do only two drawings and the latest one comes directly from attending a class. I need to re-prioritize my "to do" list and become better at the retiring part.
Instructor and water-colorist Steve Alan stepped the class through this painting and provided some insights on developing a sky and cutting rocks into the paper. It felt good to be back with the pallet.

good bye

I found another great challenge where you get a water color blob to doodle around. Go here and check it out Gab Collab

It's FUN!

A New Find

 

Firstly, I can't believe it's been close to 3 months since my last posting. Time really flys when you're busy. Hopefully, with early retirement only 11 days away I should have the time to do what I really enjoy which is photography and painting and a few other things too.
I have found a cool site here... http://adaynotwasted.com/
Maybe it's the fine photography that is done by Lee A Brown or maybe it's the title of his blog, "A Day Not Wasted" or a combo of both but I've spent some time cruising around the blog and decided to try his August challenge.
Cheers everyone!

Eat at Joe's

 This is the second in a series of three Grand restaurants for a friend.

Heirlooms

Every Tuesday a portion of the Grand street is shut down for the Farmer's Market and there's always large tables laden with delicious, locally grown fruits and vegetables.
(for this month's Sketchbook challenge)

Cubs and Fire

It was during my trip back home to Jersey when my older brother and I decided to go fishing at the pond that we encountered a big mama bear with her three cubs. Apparently, someone had thrown some left over bagels in the area, even sticking some up high in the trees and this family enjoyed eating them all up. It was fun watching them and taking pictures from the safety of the car. My brother and I decided to go try our luck fishing at the river instead the pond. 
 
 

The fire department at my home town still sounds out the 5 o'clock whistle each night.  As a kid, when I heard that sound I knew it was time to head on home. It's comforting to know that some things don't change.  I knew drawing the building was going to be challenging due to the different shapes and angles so this was a practice session for me because I'm planning on doing a series of watercolors of my home town.

The Last Class Assignment

I can't believe how 6 weeks has gone by so quickly in our drawing class. It was a sad and quiet meeting last night as our teacher gave us our final work assignment, working with pastels! That was a first for me. And in our 45 minutes I got as far as I got below before turning in the colorful pieces of pastels  (funny how the camera couldn't clearly focus on the fuzzy board). Now I need to add more things to my art stuff...pastels....it's very different than sketching or working with water colors. But it was fun working from the dark to the lighter shades and seeing the form appear on the board. I'm hooked.

On another note, I was able to get a few people from the class signed up to continue to do some sketching meet ups. Who knows, maybe we'll get a Urban Sketchers group formed in the future. Now that would be exciting!