A Little Bit of Sketchbook Work and a Future Surprise

I grabbed one of my sketchbooks to work in over the last week.  This page started with an attempt at a mandala made from some earth mover stickers I have a roll of.  Then I decided to add the tangle Wyfore by Alice Hendon because it reminded me of the bucket parts of the earth movers even though they're basically facing the wrong way and couldn't possibly scoop anything up.  Still, it was good to practice.  

Then I drew some heart shapes touching each other and added lines to make them look a little puffy before I added some shading to make them even more dimensional. The two with the red shading were the first two I added lines to that went awry, so I made them stand out even more with the color.

More hearts.  This time I added the lines hoping to have it look like wood grain.  Thus the addition of the brown pastel pencil.  

I had seen something similar to this next one on IG.  I think it comes close to what I saw, but this is somewhat different than the neurographic pieces I've done before.  

I used some new pencils to color the "ribbons".  They are a set of 72 from Castle Arts described as their "Harmonius" collection.  I got them because the colors in the set appealed to me.  I have a few larger sets of colored pencils, but a lot of these colors are not in any of them.  They weren't that expensive for a set of that size and I wondered ahead of time if they would be of good quality and easy to use and it seems to be a yes to both of those questions.

Then it was time to switch to my Zentangle sketchbook because I saw a tutorial by Vandana Krishna to do this tile she calls Inky Umber Tile #3 on YouTube.  She used tangles SandBees, Flukes, Fragments B12, Mooka, and Flux.  And she did hers with a sepia pen in addition to the black.  I couldn't put my hands on my sepia pen right away but had the blue ones at the ready so I went in that direction.  The faint background is just pencil in this picture.  After I took the photo I found my set of gray markers and went over the pencil with the lightest shade of gray only because the pencil might smear over time.  

Next I decided to try something else with blobs, but I wound up forgetting to switch back to my regular sketchbook.  Oh well, it really doesn't matter where it is I guess because I did use some Zentangle patterns to fill in some of those blobs.

And as for the future surprise - our GS2 and GS3 are big Bluey fans.  The little guy loves to dance to the theme song and his big brother likes to hone in on the attention the little one gets so he goes a little nuts too.  I had a video of them, but I can't get it to upload.  Anyway, Bluey seems to be very popular all over the place these days and I had seen an advertisement from Home Depot for a blow up Bluey Christmas yard decoration.  I checked with Rachel first before ordering and she said okay, so they will be getting this to put on their new deck for the holidays.

 

Words and Games......With a Little Color

 OPACAROPHILE - (n) - A person who loves sunsets. (taken 8/2/24)

PAREIDOLIA - a brain phenomenon that causes people to see or hear something meaningful in a random pattern or image.  

Curious to know what YOU see in these clouds below?

Another sunset from 8/10/24.

Fishing late Saturday afternoon.  I caught 1 and brought the count to 3 me, 1 HWNSNBP.  Loved the way the light looked on the water.  

Don't look ahead - Can you find the bobber?

Now?

How about now?  Doesn't the water look like blue camouflage?

Back at home the temperature and humidity were lowered so I ventured out last night in the early evening to do some "weeding" in the planters - no squatting involved.

These are a new variety of zinnia that we tried this year and I am very pleased with them.  They are called Pink Senorita and he got the seed from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds in Mansfield, Missouri.

The hummingbirds seem to like them too.

Tomatoes, Corn, and Crabs

They call New Jersey the Garden State because there are some things that grow here that just taste better than from other places*.  This would include tomatoes, corn, and blueberries.  Blueberries are a little past their season now, but the corn and tomatoes are right in the midst of theirs.  HWSNBP usually starts tomato seedlings inside in the spring and this year he continued to do so, only this time he was given seed by one of our neighbors at the condo who used to work for the seed company we usually ordered from.  Our neighbor really endorsed this particular tomato called 4th of July for its quickness to ripen and its great production.  HWNSNBP had many plants to pass out amongst our friends and family and of course to the neighbor who recommended them.  They did grow quickly and were ripening right after the 4th of July as planned.  They are not your big juicy tomato but bigger than cherry tomatoes and a nice salad size.  

GS3 and GS2 tasting their first harvest.  Cherries and 4th of July's.

What we found however, was that the skin was very hard and not easy to bite through or cut without a serrated knife.  But we didn't say anything to our neighbor.  It was he who came over and apologized to us saying that there must have been a problem with the seed production because he and his wife found them unpalatable and had, in fact, ripped out the plant they had and threw it away very disappointed.  He said he even contacted the company to have them investigate how the production became so screwed up, but he doubts that they will get back to him about it.  Needless to say, we won't be using the extra seed that wasn't planted next year.  Our neighbor has promised to get us some seed for two other varieties that he said are good.  I'm sure we'll try them, but I'm going to remind HWNSNBP to make sure that we have at least one plant of the regular tomatoes we usually get.  (In addition to the cherries which are still good.)  

We had some corn on the cob in Tennessee, but I don't think it was as good as our Jersey corn.  I am probably biased though.  This time of year there is no shortage of farm stands carrying all the fresh local produce.  I think we tried growing corn one year a couple of decades back, but if I remember correctly, you need a plot at least 12' x 12' in order to get good pollination which was the first drawback.  The second was the squirrels.  A small corn patch is no match for a hungry squirrel or two.  So we get our corn from the farmstand.  It's taken me years to realize that even though it's fun to eat it right off the cob, it's much easier to cook it and then cut it off the cob before eating.  See, you can teach an old dog new tricks.  So this index card I did a few nights ago was inspired by the corn harvest and the tangle is appropriately called Corn Rows by Alice Hendon CZT.

And now for some crab talk.  In a few days we'll be having our annual crabbing expedition with our Table 7 group - it's the 25th anniversary so I'm told.  I will not be on the boat this year.  The twisting and bending, and the unsureness of my balance still will have me on shore.  Rest assured HWNSNBP and I have done some fishing already (and I'm ahead 3 to 1 in the fish count), but the dock has a railing that I can lean on as opposed to a bobbing boat.  I was looking for something the other day in a cabinet I had some craft items stored in and when I moved one thing, something got accidently dumped out and I had to take out all the cabinet contents to clean it up.  In the process I came upon some things I had forgotten and a couple of things that I was recently looking for that I thought were lost forever.  The thing that I had forgotten was a box of wooden crab ornaments.  I used one of them for this index card below.  I traced the crab onto the card and then added the tangle to the background before I colored the entire thing.  The name of the background tangle is Penta by Hennie Brouwer.

HWNSNBP wants me to frame this one to hang in the condo.   

We dodged the heavy rain and tornadoes that were predicted in our area from the remnants of Hurricane Debby.  I did lose the pot from my lemon tree though from the wind.  It had been knocked over a couple of times this summer but always went down pretty easy.  This time, not so much.

We will have to go pot shopping to replace that one, and we might even have to go up one size.  I'm just concerned that the tree will be getting too big for the house soon and I don't know what I'll do with it.  It's about 10 years old now and hasn't produced any lemons.  Thoughts?

ICAD - to 61 and the End of Another Year

One more year in the books = 11 years total.  It was a little challenging this year with some traveling and family time, but I made it to the end and I'm pretty pleased with most of the results.  Remember, these are all on plain 4x6" index cards and not on any kind of specialty material.  It makes it easy to have a stack of cards ready and in the end, they're pretty easy to store in this format.  So here you have the last five days and a roundup of both June and July separately.

Day 57/61 - Garden

Micron, watercolor pencils, and white gel pen.  Tangle for the flowers is Field of Flowers by Melinda Barlow CZT.  (This might be my favorite.)

Day 58/71 - Tessellation

I drew a 1/2" pencil grid and did this all in Micron.  I decided not to do any shading.

Day 59/61 - Circle

PaperMate InkJoy Brights Gel Pens on 1 1/2" round kraft stickers.  (I bought a roll of 500, so I have to find some uses for them.)

Day 60/61 - Planetarium (Off Prompt)

Imagine looking up through that lens into the universe....... maybe?  Micron and watercolor pencils.

Day 61/61 - Diorama (Off Prompt - though I did try to use a pattern that would try to look like you were looking through something.)  Micron and watercolor pencils.  Tangle is Ellipse by Hennie Brauwer. 

 (If you really want to see a great index card diorama please visit my blogging buddy Lauren at All the Good Blog Names Were Taken.

I have put all my cards on the floor in the past, but I'm not doing that bending so I had to resort to putting them one month at a time on our square coffee table at the condo - thus the interference in the background under the glass top.

June 2024

July 2024

I see that I fell back on tangling quite a bit with these but I'm okay with that because I'm satisfied with the results.  I also see that I basically use the same materials, and that's mainly due to what I can easily carry back and forth on the weekends when we go to the condo, or when we're not at home and visiting family.  It's good to have a to-go kit of the basics like a couple of Microns, pencils, waterbrush, eraser, glue, etc.  Then when picking the color medium, it's based on what I can transport easily.  In some ways, it's limiting myself because I have a LLLLLLLLOOOOOOOTTTTTTTT of stuff to choose from.  I should probably make it a goal next year to be more varied with my choices when I know I'm going to be home during the week.  Someone out there will remind me...........right?  

Let me finish by saying thank you for the encouragement and the comments during this and really all of the challenges that I've shared.  It's always nice to see that what I've created not only pleases me, but it pleases others too.

PS - I came back to add that I'm going to take some time to catch up on my blogging buddies' blogs and to clean out my email accounts which always seem to multiply exponentially.