Virtual Sketchcrawl #10 - food prep or aftermath

I'm not cooking ahead for Thanksgiving, but I did have some parsnips and a carrot that needed to get eaten up.  So I decided to roast them.  I laid them out (artistically) and did a quick sketch while cooking some bacon in the preheating oven.

And then, while those were roasting, opened and cleaned an acorn squash, to bake for later.

Sketching in a grid

Today's urban sketching challenge.  Vignettes from Aramis' grave.

I ended up not using the musketeer cartoon as a grid, when I decided that it was too ornate.  But I did use a stylized cat head for a grid instead.

Virtual sketchcrawl - change up your process

I decided to do random color, with marker pen and airbrush. 

And it came out virtually unrecognizable.  That's my TV, surrounded by piles of books and DVDs that are waiting to go back to the library, streaming a virtual version of this year's Bach Festival in Leipzig.  

Some performances are still happening in Leipzig, while the groups that intended to come taped performances and sent them in to be broadcast.

The different groups used different ways to record their pieces.  Some did solo works.  Some had all the musicians record themselves at home, and stitched the parts together.  One used a church, with the string section on one side, all wearing masks, and the soprano way over across on the other side.  In Germany, things seemed to be the loosest, with an actual live audience (albeit 2 meters apart and masked).  The musicians were unmasked, and keeping a 2 meter separation.  Even the singers.  Which was a bit unnerving.  (At Trinity Cathedral, singers must keep a 15' separation.)

And this is my (gray) cat, who came to sit on my lap.

Virtual sketchcrawl - Embody the art you love

Today's challenge was to be inspired by and emulate some piece of artwork that you love.  I'd picked Hokusai's Great Wave.  

I used a limited palette and no blending to try to emulate a woodblock print, portraying a few leaves of the shrub beside my front porch.

Construction

I thought that I should document all the construction that going on within sight of my house.  Cause someday, God willing, it'll all be done and quiet on the street again.

The green dumpster is for my next door neighbor.  The structural work is all done now, and the electrical system and plumbing have been repaired.  They still have to re-assemble her kitchen, and repair the plaster and repaint in the rest of the house.

The brown dumpster is for the triplex across the street, which has been vacant for years.  The original plan was to turn it into a five-story building containing three luxury condominiums.  That, thankfully, was scrapped.  It's either going to come back to life as a modest triplex, or have the apartments merged to become a single-family house.

And behind that, where the alternator rebuild shop used to be, a new condo building is going up. 

Virtual sketchcrawl - Continuous line

Another session of sketching together, while at home.  This time Kalina had issued a challenge, of sketching using continuous line.  I wasn't sure that it'd actually work on a tablet, since I use my big fat finger, but I tried it anyway, sketching the sewing machine with a half-done face mask still under the presser foot.

By the time I was done with that the bread that I'd left in the toaster oven was done, so I pulled it out, arranged it 'artfully', pulled up a stool and did that.

Finished that, salivating, because the bread just smelled so good, and then cut the bread open to have a chunk.  And then another.  And then sketched what was left.

More carpenters

Half the city is shut down, but workers are still coming round to work on my neighbor's house.  For which she's extremely grateful, hoping to be able to get back into it soon.

Virtual art meet-up

Mary tried a virtual meet-up today, to replace our normal meeting at the art museum, which is closed.

Today's challenge came from a quarantine art club on instagram.  It was to pick something mundane, something extraordinary, and some garb and mash them together.  So I did Aramis, with a lion's tail, and a surgical mask.

That took all of ten minutes, so I went looking for something else to draw.  And saw Ollie sitting up on the hill in the backyard.  She kept moving though, and eventually saw me through the window and ran down to ask for love.

And then I sneaked out the back door to see if I could snag one of Barbara's fallen red camellia blossoms to bring inside.  No, her front yard was still filled with men and ladders.  But I noticed a broken branch on one of my camellia's (Did it come that way, or was it hit by a flying shingle?) and brought that in instead.



Camellia

A few buds and flowers of the second new camellia.

I went outside for this one and sat on the wall between my yard and my neighbor's.

New plantings

I'd planned the locations of the new plants specifically so that I'd be able to see them from my bedroom windows.  Which worked out nicely when I want to be able to sketch something from my window.

This is the part of the yard where most of the oak tree landed.  So between that, and the chimney fall and the equipment used to get the oak tree out, there wasn't much of my old landscaping left. 

This is a camellia on the left, and a dogwood on the right, and random rounds of pine tree trunk set up in between, as a sitting area.

Construction

Workers showed up this morning to do some demolition on my next-door neighbor's house!  Spanish-speaking guys, on a Sunday?  Has mass been canceled?  No, but the bishop has offered a dispensation, to those who aren't feeling well, or are at risk, are even the least bit uneasy about going to church.