Hairy Family

These guys are hairier than I am. Yesterday someone brought in a bunch of calendars to work that were up for grabs. I think people thought it was strange that anyone would want the all gorillas calendar, but I just had to have the photo that I used for this drawing. It's a fabulous photo and I wanted to sketch it. I am thinking I might actually try painting it and rather than drawing it again on the canvas, I man just transfer this drawing onto the canvas. We'll see... I love how the daddy gorilla is kind of playing with his foot like a human baby. It's funny how all my gorillas are smiling. In the photo they look grumpy. I didn't consciously make them smile--they just came out that way. I'm actually thinking I may paint another chicken today.


In non-gorilla and non-chicken news, I was just at Bruegger's and ordered a bagel with a piece of cheese. How simple is that... Well, to someone that is asking her co-worker questions at the same time as I'm trying to tell her what I want, I guess it's not so simple. For example, I said a thin layer of butter on one side. What does she do? She puts a thick coat of butter on both sides. And then I told her twice that I wanted cheddar cheese, but noticed that the slice she was throwing on the bagel was obviously not cheddar, but provolone. I then said, sort of annoyed at this point, "I wanted cheddar." She then has the nerve to say "you said provolone." No, I did not say "provolone." "Cheddar" sounds absolutely nothing like "provolone" and when have I ever ordered provolone, anyway? I would have hated to try to order something complicated with her... As someone that does customer service and knows how important it is to listen to what people have to say, I would give her two thumbs down, way down. I bet my gorillas could do a better job.

Colorful Chicken

Yes, I did paint a chicken tonight. I have been painting this chicken well into the wee hours of the morning. I don't know what time I started, but I'm thinking it must have been 12:30 as these small paintings usually take about 2 hours. Had I painted a rooster, he would have to be to work in a few hours, so it's good that I went for the hen (at least I think it's a hen)as she doesn't have to do the cock-a-doodle-doo thing at dawn. Yes, I do know that it is just a painting and if it was a rooster, he really would not have to do anything at all, but its fun to pretend and my mind has a tendency to be more prone to fantastical thoughts in the wee early morning hours. I am very glad that there won't be any roosters (real or painted) crowing in my small space though. I wouldn't like that. I will pretend further and hope that the painted hen will lay an egg for me (preferably real, rather than painted) as I only have one egg left in my fridge and it is hard boiled. As for this painted hen, I think it needed some more darks as it is rather light and bright, but maybe it is a Scandinavian chicken rather than an Italian (although it could be Northern Italian) and therefore its feathers don't contain as much pigment. No, that is not really the way things are with chickens, but it may be part of my own late night (or wee early morning) chicken mythology. Anyway, all this post has proven is that whether we are talking about roosters or hens (painted or not painted), it is fun to use a lot of parenthesis when one is being silly in the wee morning hours.

In other news... Hmm, I don't seem to have any other news, so the chicken stuff will have to suffice.

Edited to add that it is 2:54 now and I'm still not tired. It's amazing when I think about how tired I was at work earlier and how wide awake I am now. This is either just a regular old second wind or the after effects of the Dr. Pepper I drank after work.

A Weekend Drawing Event drawing...

Hi everyone. I did do two drawings for the weekend drawing event this weekend and this is the one I just finished. I spent the whole two hours on him. I'm sure I've mentioned before that for the weekend drawing event, you can only spend up to two hours on a work before you post it. He was fairly easy to draw--much easier than the portrait that I did earlier that I may not even post here.

And just to make my mom happy again, I will let her know that I did vacuum today. I know she always likes to hear that I did a bit of cleaning and am not spending all of my spare time drawing.

Tomorrow I have to work, so I had to get the drawing in today. I drank a Dr. Pepper with my dinner at about 7:30 this evening. I hope it doesn't keep me awake. I usually can drink soda in the evening without and adverse effects, but sometimes it does affect me. Anyway, I don't have anything interesting to say tonight, so I'll keep this short (or is it already long on account of the rambling?). One more thing... Yes, it was a nice day today, but it was a little warmer than I would have liked. I just can't seem to get this apartment cooled down. It is 80 in here right now and I do not want to run the air-conditioner. I need a breezy, 60 degree day without any sun to cool this place down.

Morning snooze... (with edits)

They were very active and disruptive early this morning. Now they are sleepy.

Edited several hours later to say that I did do a new painting today, but I can't post it as it's oil. I tried photographing it, but the non-flash one was too blurry and the flash one was too glarey. I'll have to wait a few days until I can scan it.
Right now I'm contemplating the idea of going out for that pumpkin latte.

Edited again to add that I'm finally sipping my wild pumpkin latte from Caribou. I had discipline and I waited until fall-like weather arrived and it tastes even better than I had anticipated. Yay fall! Oh, and it cost me nothing as I had some money left on a Caribou card.

Very Hatty

Is "hatty" a word? If not, I think it should be. It does kind of sound like a British word as I do know that they use the slang word "shirty" which means annoyed. I know hatty is probably not a word, but I would like to use it as such and say this is a very hatty sketch. It was all about the hat as it kind of dominates the photo and the drawing. I don't particularly like to draw hats or clothes or anything like that, so that is why I decided to do this drawing. And I do have to say that I didn't mind drawing the hat at all. It was all a very hatty experience. And no, I am not feeling haughty about it.

It is now 12:16, so I have about an hour before I have to go meet my co-worker to drive to the far side of town to do some sort of ridiculous electronic time-card training. I am drinking my coffee now, so hopefully I will stay awake, as I know my co-worker has a difficult time staying awake in meetings. I hate having to do work stuff on my day off. And I worked two hours less yesterday to make up for the two hours today and it didn't even feel like two hours less--it felt like a full day. So, I feel shafted. *whine*

And don't pay attention to the tweets. They're not my own. The Twitter/Blogger application that I use is having some issues and random peoples' tweets are showing up here. I guess they're working on the problem. I'm going to wait a little while and see if it gets fixed soon before removing the application.

Edited to add that I just did a search and "hatty" is a word! It is defined as "of, relating to, or resembling, a hat; Fond of hats." So, I can say that the subject in the drawing is hatty and that the drawing itself is hatty.

An hour with a pencil...

I spent an hour with a pencil last night and this is what I came up with. It felt good to hold a pencil again and just scribble after two weeks of splashing paint. This was for the weekend drawing event, but I don't think I'll post it there as I won't have time to comment on everyone's work at this point. I have very little time on Mondays and Tuesdays and on Wednesday I have to go to a silly time card training for work. So, no time for commenting...

I love that it feels slightly more fallish today. Although, looking ahead, at the extended forecast, it seems that temperatures are going to drop and then rise again. I feel like this weather is like a fever that just won't break. It seems unhealthy. I know a lot of people love it, but they've already had four months of summer. I wish they would stop being so selfish by wishing for an extended summer and let me have my beloved fall. I have this fear that it's going to go right from summer to winter this year. One day it will be 85 degrees and the next, 32 and snowing...

In library news, Banned Book Weeks starts this week. I think I will honor it by checking out a banned book, reading it and then blogging about it. It's amazing to see the lists of books that get challenged. Most of them are pretty benign...

Oh, and nephew Zach, if you're reading this, that's an interesting new profile picture, but it's a bit small for me to make out what in the world you're wearing on your head. Is it a sailor cap? Have you joined the navy? I think you're a bit too young for that.

Because I promised that I wouldn't mention a certain animal...

Yes, I did promise that, didn't I. So, I painted a flower. Some of you may know that I don't particularly like to paint flowers or paintings of flowers in general. I like faces and I like things with character. Flowers are pretty, but they're just kind of common in the painting world. Yes, I know people are too, but at least people have faces and expressions and such differentiating characteristics. And with people, I tend to gravitate towards faces that are not traditionally beautiful. Traditional beauty can be a bit boring with its symmetry and all. Anyway, when I do paint flowers, I tend to go for the sunflower. It is a flower that does seem to have more character than many and it is pretty, but not too pretty and I can always sneak a face in it.

In non painting news, I had my friend, Amy over for movie night last night. We watched the last 4 hours of Pride and Prejudice (we both have seen it multiple times, so we can quote at it certain points) as we had watched the first two last week. I usually go to her house, but mine is clean enough to be presentable at the moment and her kids were with her (soon to be ex)husband. However, I was going to vacuum for her and ended up creating a vacuuming catastrophe. I think I either put my vacuum cleaner bag in wrong or it was defective. When I tried to vacuum, it had a great deal of suction, but I found it was all escaping out of the other end. It shook up a huge cloud of the Arm and Hammer powdery carpet stuff and dust which made me cough and cough and I was already coughing before the vacuuming. So, that was the end of that idea. I'll take a look at the vacuum cleaner bag again today, I just don't want to deal with another dust and powder cloud.

Again, I'm hungry after painting, but I think I'm going to go out and do the things that I have to do before I think about eating. I pigged out on pizza last night and didn't think I'd be hungry again. But, here I am...

Oh, and the scan of this painting is annoying. I hate how you can sometimes see the little square in the middle. That's the part of the canvas that doesn't have the wood frame. I think the light from the scanner seeps through that part and makes it lighter than the rest of the painting. There is a reason why a lot of people photograph their paintings rather than scanning them.

Two today...

Today I painted not one, but two rhinos. And just to make my mom happy if she's reading this, I did do my dishes and picked up the apartment as well. It wasn't just painting all day long... My first rhino, the singing rhino, that I will call Bob is pretty much disastrous. I didn't quite have the drawing right before I started painting and he's obviously in a strange pose for a rhino, and he just looks a bit weird. He's actually quite bow legged (well, more so than usual, I think) and he just did not turn out to my liking. If I had some gesso, I would gesso over the canvas right away, but as I don't have any, it will continue to exist for awhile. i I don't even know why I'm posting it other than to show that I did paint two rhinos today. Oh, and I named him Bob because I think he sings like Bob Dylan.



The second rhino, the green rhino, I really like. He doesn't have a name. He actually looks much better in person than in the scan. The reason why I like him is that he is a gentle looking rhino. When I draw and post my drawings for other artists to see, they always say my drawing style is very "gentle" and "sensitive." I get a lot of compliments about that. But when I paint, I have a tendency to go bold. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not planning on stopping bold painting, but I just wanted to hold back a bit, and do a painting that one could maybe describe as "gentle." I think that this is the closest I've come to achieving that with acrylics. He actually looks more bold in the scan, but I hope you will believe me when I say, that he is gentle in person. If he sang, he would not sound like Bob Dylan, but maybe more like Art Garfunkel (to choose another singing icon from the 60's).

I will also post a picture that I took (with my phone, mind you, so it isn't very clear) of my rhinos from the past week standing on the bookshelf. If you look closely, you may see a plush rhino peeking out from the top shelf as well.



In non rhino news, I am really getting sick of this weather. I have my air-conditioner running right now and I don't want to have my air-conditioner running. I want temps. in the 60s or low 70s. I know it isn't technically fall yet, but it is September and the leaves are changing, so the weather should certainly adjust itself to get with the times. I have decided when it hits the 60's or the low 70's I'm going to treat myself to a wild pumpkin latte at Caribou, so it should hurry up because I would really like one...

In other news, I'm really hungry! When I paint, I can't eat (and even forget to eat), so after two paintings, I'm famished. I think I'll have a tomato. For once in my life, I have an abundance of fresh tomatoes and don't feel like I have to hoard them. Here ends my long, rambling post. Next time I will post something that isn't a rhino and won't even mention rhinos.

Blue Rhinoceros

Well no, not really as there is no such thing as a blue rhinoceros. This is, as you've already been informed, a black rhinoceros. You can tell by his rather funny prehensile lip. I wanted to paint this guy again in different colors. These colors are different, as you can see. I wanted to try painting without using any red as I always get obsessed with red. Even if the painting doesn't have red in it, I will add red at the end. In the end, with this experiment, I think I will probably go back and add some red, both in the rhino and the background. I just can't stay away from the color, I guess.

Do I have anything interesting to type today? I think not, other than the fact that I was really feeling like Sisyphus at work yesterday. I kept trying to roll my ball up the hill and it came crashing down over and over and kept making baby balls that I just had to keep rolling up the hill and they kept multiplying and multiplying. And I think Sisyphus was lucky just having to deal with the one ball... I think we're all starting to feel like this at work and it is very disheartening when one of our people is moving to a new library via reassignment and we don't get anyone reassigned to our place. How crappy is that? This wasn't interesting typing, was it? Just work venting...

Anyway, I'll stop trying to come up with anything interesting. I think the blue rhinoceros would probably come up with more interesting typing than mine. What would he say? "I was painted today and I'm feeling quite blue. Where is the red? I don't like being a painted rhino because I don't get to eat or wallow in the mud. Right now I'm perched on a bookshelf. What's the fun in that? I would read one of these books, but rhinos don't know how to read, especially those of us without any red."

Another rhino in acrylics...

I have the painting bug again, I guess. I consider myself to be a drawer (not the kind that you open and close and put stuff in, but the kind that scribbles with a pencil), not a painter, but sometimes painting can be lots of fun. And maybe it's just lack of confidence in painting that makes me think I'm only a drawer (although it could be laziness as it's much more work to drag out paints than to grab pencils). The only way to get that confidence is to keep on trying. So, I am trying again. I do have an itch to try oils. I have a small set and I think they may be a bit easier than acrylics as they don't dry so fast and you can blend colors together, but they're also more complicated because you need to add stuff to the paints and they take forever to dry. I would have to wait days to scan an oil painting, not 5 minutes like I do with acrylics. Anyway, here is my favorite subject again. I wanted to do another sitting rhino as I don't seem to see sitting rhinos all that often and I think they look super cute (like totally) that way. The smile is all my own doing as my subject in the photo looked a bit cranky. Should I make you guess what kind he is again?

Autumn Rhino

Well, I broke down and took out my paints this afternoon. I have been itching to paint this rhino as I find him (or her)so tubby and adorable. If ever I were to rub a rhino's belly, this would be the one. This photo was one of the winners of the International Rhino Foundation's photo contest. Yes, I know it is a copyrighted photo, but I have no intentions of making money off this painting. I'll even credit the photographer. Her name is Becky Krywko. Becky Krywko, if for some one and a million reason you are looking at this, your photo is fabulous and inspiring. I'm very glad I did fight my laziness and take out my paints today as I had a lot of fun and I think the rhino turned out way cute.

I am very happy fall is on the way, that is why I think I went for the autumn colors in the background. I could picture it with a patch of pumpkins to the side, but I didn't paint it that way. The rhino himself sort of resembles a pumpkin or maybe more like a pear. He actually is the personification (or should we say rhinocification)of the term pear shaped. I'm sure he (I'm just calling it a he as I don't feel like typing "or she" each time) has absolutely no problems with his pear shape. Even if it is a she, I feel she would still have no problem with her pear shape. Rhinos aren't known for the low self-esteems. Anyway, back to fall... Caribou is offering their fall coffee drinks and it is after Labor Day, so for me, it is fall, even if the weather is still a bit warm for my taste.

Oh, and extra points to anyone that can tell me what kind of rhino this is.
Hint: the lip.

Blah Blah Blah Blue Rooster

I have been unmotivated to draw lately. I tried to draw a rooster and got so bored with him, so I stopped before I had anything decent. I think part of the problem was that this rooster should have a dramatic red comb and I was drawing him with graphite. Some things should not be drawn with graphite. Red combs are one of them. So, I played around in photoshop a bit, but I wasn't motivated to do that either, so I just did something simple. The result was not a rooster with a dramatic red comb, but a blue rooster. I think I really need to take out my paints, but I'm feeling too lazy for that as well. Why should I feel lazy? I haven't worked for two days. I guess it's just the end of summer blahs. I am so looking forward to fall. Fall has a tendency to energize me creatively and this year I don't have to go back to school, so I should have time to create.

You know what? I don't even really feel like blogging right now, so why am I blogging? Just so I can say "blah blah blah blah blah?" I guess that's probably the reason why. Blah blah blah Ginger... Ginger's a dog, in case you don't know that Far Side (or is it Farside?) cartoon. I meant to end this post with blah blah, not by adding "Ginger" and then explaining that Ginger was a dog, so blah blah blah...

I heart cats...

The above (upon looking at my post, it's not really above, is it? It's beside this bit of writing) picture is a colored pencil drawing I did of my friend's dog, Daphne, quite some time ago. I know I have posted it elsewhere, in blogs of yore, but decided I would post it here as it has never been posted here, so therefore, is new, in a sense... Right? Anyway, Daphne is the dog that I stayed with for 4 days that made me decide that I am now a cat person. I like Daphne (I really do), but I think I like her best when I am visiting her, not living with her. She is a very naughty and needy dog. She whines all the time, she won't come inside when you call her and she is afraid of everything. As an example of her fear, when I threw a Cheeto at her, she went running to the bedroom and shrunk. Now, she has had Cheetos and other snacks tossed at her many times (and they are thrown so she can catch them and eat them, not as weapons), but this time she decided that it was scary. The other dog had no problem having Cheetos thrown at him. In fact, he was very very happy about it. I did tell my friend that a good name for Daphne's autobiography that would sort of illustrate her fear of non scary inanimate objects would be Chased by Cheetos.

In other news, I am very happy to be home (I suppose that isn't other news as I basically implied the fact in the prior paragraph). Although my sleep was interrupted this morning by the little apartment repair man. He was wondering if the washing machine was working o.k.. I told him the last time I used it, it was perfectly fine and maybe it was the other building. Hopefully that was the case and ours hasn't broken since Tuesday when I used it last. In the repair man's defense, it was 10:00, but I was catching up on all the sleep that I missed out on while I was away from home dealing with dogs. Oh, I do heart cats...

Bloodhounds the latest weapon against ivory and bushmeat poachers - Times Online

Bloodhounds the latest weapon against ivory and bushmeat poachers - Times Online

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I thought this was interesting. Way to go, bloodhounds! Just when I had posted on Twitter that I am now officially a cat person...