Tag: Drawing

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Art

Daylight Savings End Eve=Xmas Eve

Daylight Savings Eve, 5×8” Ink, Neocolor II, Inktense pencils

The end of Daylight Savings is my favorite day of the year! It’s like Christmas Eve—I love knowing I get a free hour to use as a “Do-Over” sometime during the day, after I’ve fallen into a rabbit hole of one sort or another.

And I fall into a lot of rabbit holes, thanks to ADHD and its “time blindness” feature.

Like today, I was about to do a Peloton cycling class but found myself finally clearing out all the bags and bins of lockdown-era flours for bread making instead.

Then I moved on to the containers of dried beans and peas I’ll never cook. I posted the beans on my local Buy Nothing group. Hopefully someone who is still friends with legumes can enjoy some soup making. 

I finally did the fun cycling class, but so late that lunch after was at 4:00 pm. And finally got in the studio and drew this to celebrate Daylight Savings End Eve.

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Art Sketchbook Pages

Goat Self Portrait, Because Bouc & Caprine

“Le Bouc Caprine” Colored pencil and Neocolor II in Stillman & Birn Epsilon sketchbook, 10×8”

Yesterday, while reading The Blue Sisters by Coco Mellors, I came across a word I didn’t know: “caprine.” In a painting of the sisters, “the artist had given their faces a caprine quality.” A quick dictionary lookup said it means “relating to or resembling goats.” Yikes.

But I was delighted to find a new word for one of my favorite animals. Then it hit me: my last name, Bouc*, also means goat! (Billy goat, actually.) I immediately had to find a goat photo to sketch for the day’s self-portrait.

Preliminary sketch in colored pencils (that I colored over)

Which version do you like better? I think I should have stopped with the quirkier, more curious, more me, colored pencil version. But I wanted to keep playing and added Neocolor II crayons on top. One day I might learn to stop sooner rather than later.

*Bouc was my ex-husband’s family name, but I kept it after we parted. I’ve had that last name much longer than my father’s last name — a name I never liked and that wasn’t even really ours. My grandfather, a refugee from Kiev, was given it at Ellis Island because they said his real name couldn’t be spelled in English.

Me if I was a goat, photo reference:

Photographer: Andy Bodemir on Unsplash.com
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Art

If I Were an Animal (self-portrait?)

Coatimundi, 8×5”, colored pencils and Neocolor II

I’ve been doing a daily self-portrait in my journal since June. Today’s self-portrait took a detour—I drew an animal I’d like to be instead, because, why not? My journal, my rules.

I met a cute, young, friendly coatimundi* when I was traveling around Costa Rica years ago. We had stopped at Tilajari, a resort where we hoped to stay, but all the rooms were taken by the crew of the movie Congo, which was being filmed in the jungle nearby.

The proprietor was kind enough to give us a tour of the resort, which he had created from a dream and built and landscaped over 15 years. After petting the coatimundi, I reached up to pet a big toucan sitting on a low branch of a tree.

The toucan gently snatched the ring on my finger with its enormous yellow bill and started tugging at it. Our host laughed and told me these toucans were trained to steal gold. I guess he figured out my ring was silver because it released my finger and flew higher up in the tree.

*Coatimundis are in the raccoon family but are not nocturnal like raccoons, and they have funny snouts a little like pigs. The males are solitary and the females and their young band together in social groups of up to 25. The males only join them during mating season.

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Art

Wordle: ARBOR (Day)

Wordle: ARBOR (Day)

For Wordle ARBOR I thought of Arbor Day, a holiday I remember from elementary school when people made a big deal about planting trees, which I was confused about. I didn’t know the meaning of the word Arbor nor what it had to do with tree planting.

It turns out “Arbor Day—which literally translates to “tree” day from the Latin origin of the word arbor—is a holiday that celebrates the planting, upkeep and preservation of trees.”

Arbor Day was invented by a couple in Nebraska in the 1870s. You can read about the interesting history here.

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Art Sketchbook Pages

Wordle: VAGUE and Dreams

Wordle: VAGUE and Baby
Dreams

The pencil portrait on this page has a VAGUE resemblance to a dear friend who used to be vague—always a good listener and caring person but one who rarely spoke up about herself.

Then she found her voice and now she asks for what she needs. She is no longer vague; she is very specific and now our friendship is so much stronger.

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Art

Wordle: RIPER (and dreams)

Wordle: RIPER and dreams

For Wordle: RIPER I drew the stages of bananas from Green to Ick. Why do they go from green to black so fast? I learned recently that if you seal the end where it connected to the bunch with plastic wrap or foil the ripening process goes more slowly.

The dreams above were:

(1) Riding in a NYC taxi and explaining to the driver how New Yorkers are born with wisdom and know things others don’t, like how to get home when the bus stops running, and then crying because I love NY so much and want to be back there.

(2) I thought the cab driver might be homeless but he said he had to hurry and go because his wife is in a Calvin Klein Fashion show.

(3) Admiring my friend Barbara’s belt and then realizing I have one just like it. (Except in real life I don’t own a single belt but wish I did.)

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Art

Wordles: RUDDY & SWEAT (and dreams)

Wordle: RUDDY and dreams

For Wordle: RUDDY I drew the North American Ruddy Duck. These funny, cute critters need to get a running start across the water in order to take flight. Also above are some vibrant dreams illustrated that you can read if you want to click to enlarge the image.

Wordle: SWEAT(s) and dream that Adam Scott was my boyfriend

My usual at-home wardrobe consists of sweats (above) because as Mark Twain said, ”The coldest winter I ever spent was summer in San Francisco.” The constant fog and wind in my neighborhood call for sweats and a hoodie most of the time, even or especially in the summer.

I’d been watching the very funny Party Down on Hulu (from 2010) that Adam Scott stars in. So in my dream (above) he was my boyfriend and we were planning our ill-fated wedding.

The 2-page spread
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Art

Two Creepy Wordles: (Prison) KIOSK and AVAIL

Wordle: Prison Music KIOSK

When I googled “KIOSK,” I landed on http://www.PrisonKiosk.net, a seller of Prison Music Kiosks with the tagline, “The “i-Tunes of U.S. prisoners.” The site displays a photo of a hapless prisoner paying to play music. The Prison-Industrial complex provides opportunities for entrepreneurs to invent businesses to capitalize on the system.

Wordle: AVAIL

She AVAILed herself of a VEIL to No AVAIL. It wasn’t going to hide the fact that she was a creepy clown. Also a dream of shopping for chaise lounges at Costco. All they had were the nasty ones with plastic straps of colored plastic that stick to your skin and leave stripey dents.

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Art

Wordle: MAGIC and CACHE + Dreams

Wordle: CACHE (Woodpeckers Cache: 700 pounds of acorns)

In Santa Rosa, California a cache of 700 pounds of acorns were discovered in the walls and chimney of home that had been stored there by a pair of Acorn Woodpeckers (Melanerpes formicivorus). I love their little red caps that look like Catholic cardinal’s hats.

In the dream (above) I was the star of a hearing aid study where the hearing aids have AI and the whole world comes alive in 3-D sound like you’re in a video game.

Wordle: MAGIC and dreams of elephant-nosed dog and housecleaning

Dreams are MAGIC because in dreams I can fly and it’s so much fun! In dream #1 above I was at the SPCA and saw a cute, fluffy puppy with a nose like an elephant’s trunk. I wanted to adopt him (but he was already spoken for).

Usually my dreams are much more mundane, like dream #2 and #3, mostly about housecleaning.

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Art

Sound, Synchronicity and Salsa (Wordles and Dreams)

Wordle: SOUND and Synchronicity.

The Wordle was SOUND and it was a day of synchronicity because I finally have good sound in the studio again thanks to a cheap Bluetooth Dongle. (Click image to enlarge to read more about it).

I am months and probably 100 pages behind in posting so will keep this short. I almost posted these two journal pages a month ago but got frustrated when I couldn’t get a clean image. I decided to just get them posted anyway, even if they’re not close to perfect.

Wordle: SALSA and bizarro dreams