Artichoke

Well, I thought I would start blogging again so that I would be inspired to draw new things, but since I did work today and I am tired and don't feel much like doing much of anything tonight, I thought I would post an old drawing.  Well, not that old, but something that was drawn after last Halloween (it seems that one of my last blog posts before the latest posts was from last Halloween) and before today....  This is an artichoke.  I love the look of artichokes, but when I buy them, I seem to not know what to do with them.  I did buy one artichoke at the beginning of the summer and it just withered in my refrigerator.  But as for other vegetables (well, maybe fruits in this case--avocados are a fruit, aren't they?), I did make avocado pudding tonight.  It is good but a little bit too chocolatey.  It was very easy to make and I do think I will make it again, but maybe with a bit less cocoa and a bit more vanilla.  My recipe called for one avocado, 1/4 cup of agave nectar or maple syrup, 6 tbsps of milk of some sort (I used coconut milk), 1 tsp of vanilla and 1/4 cup of cocoa.  You blend all of that in the blender and then it's pudding.

The Queen

It seems like the queen has been in the media a lot lately with her Diamond Jubilee and then the Olympics.  Yes, I just know her as the queen, not as a queen of a specific country.  All other queens seem to be less important, don't they?  She is The Queen.  Anyway, why did I draw a picture of the queen, you may wonder?  It was for one of my co-worker's retirement.  She loves the queen and anything British.  And even though it is not an exact likeness, she loved my version of the queen and said she is going to actually frame it, which I found quite amusing.  So, here she is, in all of her royal glory.

New Look

OK, yesterday when I posted, all of my sidebar stuff went down to the bottom of my blog. So, I decided to do a blog redesign and reload everything, etc... But as you can see, my stuff is still on the bottom. Well, the picture (at the moment 2 pictures) is at the bottom--the other stuff isn't there because I removed it. I am going to give up, for now, as it is driving me crazy and I have to get going. My old banner was awful and outdated, so I made a new banner. I may keep this one and I may not. I had it stretched out all along the top, but it was too big and intense. Gigantic, close up yam heads can be a bit frightening. Before I go, here is another Sharpie sketch based on a Van Gogh. I still have a couple more of these that I haven't scanned yet. OK, I just did a preview and my stuff on the bottom seems to have moved to the top. There you will see you can subscribe by e-mail (jb asked about that). I don't know what is going on, but it is odd. I spent all of this time on the template editor trying to fix the problem, when all I had to do is post. Weird.

Edited to add that it did not fix the problem.  When I did a preview of my post, it did, but when I posted, it reverted back to the way it was.  Grumple.

Two Van Gogh Sharpie Marker Sketches

I see my last post was from April 29th. Have I lost the blogging bug? I blogged regularly for several years and seem to have gotten out of the habit. Am I just sick of it or am I just being lazy? Have new forms of social media taken the place of mhy blogging? It's not that I love Facebook so much. I really don't. I am going to try to blog again. Maybe that will stir up my drawing bug again. It's not that I haven't drawn at all, just not as much as in the past. Here are two (well, the title says it all)... I won't repeat myself. I just did these quickly and had fun with them. Obviously you can't erase with Sharpie markers. They are quite permanent. Oh, and I should mention, I do now have a flesh colored Sharpie. My wish came true...

A Blue Elephant...

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Hey faithful blog buddies (if any of you are still out there). It is time to do a new post. It has only been 6 months since my last blog post, after all. I have not been drawing much, I do have to admit. And blogger has completely changed in the meantime. This is a whole new format that I am posting on. We'll see if it actually posts. Anyway, last night I did draw and I produced this elephant that I am still working on. He is not actually blue. I just made him that way in my photo software. I guess I cannot say that I am like the elephant that Dr. Suess is talking about, as I have not been a faithful blogger. Will I continue to blog after this post? Who knows... We'll see.

Happy Halloween!

I don't have anything scary to post today, but I do have these punkins (yes, that is how I meant to spell it) that I painted a week or two ago. I figured I should make a Halloween post as I completely forgot about Columbus Day. I shouldn't neglect all of the October holidays. I don't have much to say today other than "Happy Halloween." I did not decorate for Halloween this year, but I do have two black cats, so that should suffice.

Drawing

I tried to paint tonight. It was disastrous, so I won't be posting it. Instead I will post two sketches that I've done in my sketch book in the past week. They are both "copies" of Durer's work. It seems that everything that I tried to do today didn't work out. I have been making soup pretty much every weekend, trying new recipes... Most of them have been successful. Today's lentil soup just ended up a muddy, ploppy pile. I don't even think I will be eating it. Tonight I ate spaghetti instead. Anyway, I enjoyed working on these sketches. I like sketches. I like creating them and I like looking at them. It's too bad that a group of teenagers had to rowdily arrive in the room where I was looking at sketches while at the Institute of Art earlier this week. Teenagers should not travel in packs in art museums.